
Book— ' 



G-O 







FOUNDED MDCCaCVllI 
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

Class JJ*^} 

BookJL^OQ Vol 



GIVEN BY 



V.urt . itttrvvfc 



r 





REATION. 



THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE 



CONTRASTED WITH 



THE GEOLOGICAL THEORY. 



BY 

ELEAZAR LORD 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 

BY 

RICHARD W. DICKINSON, D.D. 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER, 145 NASSAU STREET. 

1851. 



Vv 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by 

ELE A ZAR L ORD, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



By Transfer 

D. C. Public library 

JUN 7 1938 



C. W. BENEDICT 
Stereotyper and Printer 

201 William Street. 



WITHDRAWN 






Public Library. 

KECEIV r 

MAY 3~i; 

WASHINGTON, D. O. 

INTRODUCTION. 



"Whatever diversity of view might be supposed to 
exist in relation to the divine origin of the Scriptures, 
it cannot be denied that they have exerted a mighty 
influence over the human mind, in awakening its 
energies and directing its inquiries. Simply to ascer- 
tain the meaning of this book, we call the Bihle, and 
to set forth the high authority of its claims on the 
belief of all men, how many languages have been 
mastered, philosophies investigated, histories studied, 
and regions explored. Difficulties of interpretation have 
but served as incentives to higher mental attainments, 
while skeptical objections have only impelled to deeper 
and more varied researches, until at last, it may be 
said, that every department of human learning has 
been rendered tributary to the illustration and defence 
of revealed truth. We need not institute any invidi- 
ous comparisons between the champions and the 
assailants of revelation ; much less challenge its ene- 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

mies to meet its friends on the fair field of open con- 
troversy. Now and then, some one, mistaking his 
prejudices for convictions, may talk loudly or scribble 
boastingly, in the hope of securing a little notoriety 
to his name ; but they who are well read in the con- 
troversies which Christianity has occasioned, will be 
slow to advance objections which have been so often 
answered or to resort to sophistry which has been 
repeatedly exposed ; and still more backward to em- 
ploy missiles which may be so easily turned to their 
own discomfiture. Such, too, is the lodgment which 
Christianity has gained in the public mind, so deep 
and wide-spread the conviction that it is inseparable 
from the best interests of society — allied, as it is, with 
the purest characters, the safest counsels, the truest 
confidences, and the dearest charities — that whoever 
shall publicly aim to undermine its authority, and 
paralyze its influence, must necessarily labor under a 
disadvantage. Hence, infidelity at the present day 
changes its forms only that it may the more effectu- 
ally conceal its designs. Now assuming some new 
phase of philosophy, and then intercepting our view 
by stratified rocks and fossil remains ; now blazoning 
the wonders of mesmerism, or the discoveries of phre- 
nology, and then wrapping itself in mystery, or lying 
encoiled in the bosom of a myth. But being less 
open, it may be only the more insidious, or if less vir- 
ulent, it is only the more dangerous : and especially 
to those who, in order to keep pace with what is called 



INTRODUCTION. V 

" the spirit of the age," would acquaint themselves 
with any and every publication, though its only claim 
to notice may be that it is the latest issue. Works 
which would shock the moral sense of the community, 
and outrage every pious sentiment, are not to be 
dreaded ; the infamy of such writings would coun- 
teract their malignity. The danger is, not that reve- 
lation will be rudely assailed, and overcome by invec- 
tive and satire ; but that it will be betrayed by a 
kiss ; that even its professed adherents, mistaking 
theories for arguments, and assumptions for facts, may, 
in some important particulars, waive its fair and obvi- 
ous meaning to save its credit with the demi- savants 
of the as^e. 

The fact that Grod has made a revelation of his 
mind and will to man, may not be openly denied ; but 
while his Word is admitted and professedly respected, 
theories are broached at variance with its doctrines, 
or even irreconcileable with its origin ; and which, 
being associated with all that currently passes for phi- 
losophy and science, are, therefore, only the more 
imposing to those who would be held in repute for 
their mental independence and enlargement. Minds 
of this class are always the first to be captivated by 
anything which has the aspect of being a new view; 
and hence, should infidel sentiments ever obtain in the 
community, it will be chiefly through their influence. 

Let it be considered, then, that whatever tends 
either to pervert or to modify the doctrines of the Gros- 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

pel, is false to Christ ; and in like manner, whatever 
tends to insinuate doubt as to the truthfulness of any 
portion of the Pentateuch, is false to Moses — though 
anything at variance with the obvious teachings of 
either the New or the Old Testament, must re-act to 
the disparagement of the other. The one necessarily 
involves the other ; so that if the inspiration of the 
Gospel be admitted, that of the Pentateuch cannot be 
consistently denied ; or if the inspiration of the latter 
be abandoned, that of the former cannot be proved. 
This is understood by the opponents of the Bible ; 
though many who admit the great truths of the Gos- 
pel, seem to imagine that because Judaism has been 
abrogated, it matters not in what sense we regard the 
teachings of Moses : they are of no practical moment 
to us as Christians, and certainly need constitute no 
limits to the speculations of the human mind. 

In some instances, we are willing to admit, that the 
lovers of science have not been aware of the tendency 
of their own views ; they have been misled by the 
spirit of theorizing, or through a desire to make to 
themselves a distinctive name by deviating from re- 
ceived hypotheses ; but in other instances, objections to 
the Mosaic record have been stated in so plausible a 
manner, that even some who hold to its credibility 
have been inclined to force its clear and admitted import 
into harmony with the positions of a Babbage or a 
Maillet. But if we are to reconcile the theories of 
geologists with the teachings of Moses, we endanger 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

the record as effectually as we should the Gospel itself, 
by attempting to harmonize its doctrines with the 
pre- conceptions of the carnal mind ; nor could there 
be an end to such a process, until we found ourselves 
hand in hand with the enemies of revelation, in demo- 
lishing its divine authority. No ; let us meet all ob- 
jections fairly put — whenever an answer is practicable ; 
but when it is not — it is legitimate to fall back on the 
authority of the Bible. Here is our vantage ground : 
all arguments against the Bible can never outweigh 
the arguments in its favor. 

We may be sure that nr thing short of a revelation 
could be accompanied by such an array of proofs ; but 
we can never be sure that all objections against the 
Bible do not arise from either the limited nature of 
our faculties, the perversion of reason, or a misappre- 
hension of the facts in any given case. Certain it is, 
that no theory can adduce a moiety of the evi- 
dence which goes to establish the authenticity and 
genuineness of the Holy Scriptures. Reason and 
revelation are traceable to the same high source. 
Science proper cannot be divorced from religion. 
Grod's works cannot contradict his Word : hence 
the presumption that any conclusion from a survey 
of his works which clashes with the intimations of 
his Word, is untenable, and will yet yield to some 
more impartial or profound analysis of physical phe- 
nomena. Objections to the Mosaic record may be 
raised on divers grounds ; and if we accommodate its 



Vlll INTEODTJCTION. 

sense to one, why not to another, and still another ? 
If we are at liberty to abandon the cosmogony of the 
Pentateuch, why not, also, the fall of man, the unity 
of the race, the origin of animal sacrifices, and the 
universality of the Deluge, — until the whole record is 
marred by the inroads of neology, or sunk in the 
excavations of geology. 

But whatever the form of such objections or under 
whatever names they are advanced, they all have the 
same tendency, and that is, to invalidate the inspira- 
tion and authority of the Pentateuch ; and hence, in 
relation to the subject to which our introduction has 
especial reference, we are reduced to this alternative : 
whether to believe Moses, or to adopt the generaliza- 
tions of some " hammer-bearing philosopher ?" 

But which should be the more competent to instruct 
us — a man whom G od had raised up, and inspired to 
be the historian of creation, or one who relies on his 
own limited and superficial understanding as to what 
the Creator of the ends of the earth has or has not 
done ? Which merits the readier credence — a record 
which has more historical and moral testimony in its 
support than any other in the world ; or a science 
which as yet has led only a few scattered individuals 
to collect, as one of the most prominent among them 
has admitted, " some materials for future gene- 
ralizations ?" — a record which preserves the same 
lucid distinctness and commanding unity through a 
period of four thousand years ; or a science which is 



INTRODUCTION". IX 

but of yesterday's growth, and embraces almost as 
many different theories, and leads to almost as many 
different conclusions, as the number of its teachers ? — 
a cosmogony, which, being in keeping with the sub- 
lime idea of creative energy, implies the supernatural ; 
or one, which having originated in an induction from 
supposed existing causes, excludes, and stigmatizes as 
unscientific, all that is miraculous in the works as 
well as in the Word of the Creator ? 

We admit that, in some of our modern treatises on 
geology, there is much that is imposing and even fas- 
cinating to the imagination, because it borders on the 
nature of new discoveries ; nor do we presume to 
deny the facts from which sage inferences are de- 
duced ; but where is the proof that geology has as 
yet legitimately accounted for the former changes on 
the earth's surface, much less for the time and man- 
ner of its origin ? Where is the consistency of geolo- 
gical theories ? What is the theory of any one writer 
on the subject, but the construction which he has 
seen fit to put on the physical phenomena of the 
globe, as being the exclusive effects, in his view, of the 
ordinary operation of natural causes ? If Smith may 
conflict in his geological views with Buckland, and 
Lyell with Lamarck ; or if the author of the " Foot- 
prints" may oppose the development theory of the 
author of the "Vestiges," with what propriety, we 
ask, can either demand that we shall substitute his 
understanding of the Mosaic record of the creation in 



X INTRODUCTION. 

the place of our own, or forfeit the respect of scientific 
men. 

If geologists may draw different conclusions from 
the changes in the organic and the inorganic world 
which are now in progress, by what law of evidence 
are we bound either to harmonize the Mosaic record 
with their conflicting theories, or to discard its author- 
ity ? 

The work of creation was necessarily a supernatural 
work ; and hence, all reasoning from the general laws 
of nature, which in their operation were subsequent 
to the work of creation, is as irrelevant in explanation 
of the Mosaic account, as the argument drawn from 
universal experience in disparagement of the miracles 
re corded in Holy Writ. Be it so, that great changes 
have for thousands of years been going on in the 
organic texture of the globe, this does not legitimate 
the inference that the world, when created, was not in 
a perfect state — having the great distinctive features 
of land and water, and adapted to the immediate and 
most exuberant production of plants and animals ; 
and though we may see in what way soils are formed, 
and by what action rocks are worn away, and how 
what is now land may have once been a lake or the 
ocean, still, it does not follow that the act of creation 
was any less a miracle ; nor that those wonderful stra- 
tified formations on which so much stress has been 
laid in support of certain theories, were not the result 
of causes acting with a rapidity and a force, of which, 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

with all our boasted knowledge of natural philosophy 
and chemistry, we can form no adequate conception. 
To admit the original act of creation, and to attempt 
to account for it on natural principles, or to prescribe 
the mode in which the primeval creation was effected, 
is preposterous in the extreme ; and he who so far 
presumes, only exposes himself to the pertinent 
rebuke : " "Where wast thou when I laid the founda- 
tions of the earth ? declare if thou hast understanding. 
Who hath laid the measure thereof if thou knowest ; 
or who hath stretched out the line upon it ? Where- 
upon are the foundations thereof fastened ; or who 
hath laid the corner-stone thereof ?" 

It is of the nature of science to be governed by 
known laws ; but it does not follow from our know- 
ledge of natural causes that there is no supernatural 
agency. No ; let natural science not overstep its legi- 
timate limits, nor venture to trench on the science of 
Heaven's revealed will ; a science, which, though it 
can adduce only historical and moral evidence in its 
support, is, by the very nature of evidence, entitled to 
equal weight with any mathematical demonstration. 
We yield to no one in our conviction of the value of 
scientific researches and discoveries ; nor are we back- 
ward in our endeavors to resolve whatever is only seem- 
ingly miraculous into natural causes, or to explain 
effects if possible, on philosophical principles ; but to our 
mind, the natural implies the supernatural, as certainly 
as the existence of the creature that of the Creator. 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

Now, to suppose, . from an observation of natural 
causes and effects, that the world could not have been 
created and finished " in the space of six days and all 
very good," is as conclusive as to infer that man was 
not created in one day, because years are necessary to 
the maturity of the infant, or that the trees were not, 
because it requires a long period of time to develope 
the acorn. Aside from this, however, to attempt to 
decide the epoch of creation by science, seems to us 
to betray as profound ignorance of the principles of 
evidence, as if one should endeavor, to explain the origin 
of Christianity by mathematics. The question respect- 
ing the origin and epoch of the creation, is not a 
scientific, it is simply an historical question ; to be 
decided as we would ascertain the correctness of any 
other point appertaining to the department of history. 
If the world is older than the Mosaic account inti- 
mates, we may expect to find among the antediluvians 
and in the earliest state of society of which we have 
any knowlege, some indications of a higher antiquity ; 
but if none are to be lbund — if, on the contrary, all 
our researches into the early condition of society only 
go to show that the beginning of the world we inhabit 
cannot be reasonably referred to a more remote period 
than that assigned by Moses, while his account is sup- 
ported by the most exact chronological computations 
drawn from well-known and indisputable historical 
facts, then, all that remains for us, is to receive the 
testimony of Moses, or to reject it ; and, in the latter 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

case, to reject it simply on the ground that it is so 
defective as to be unworthy of reasonable credence. 
Science has no logical connection with the point at 
issue. It cannot disprove what it is not competent to 
establish. If it be received, it must be, not on the 
ground of any scientific deductions, but solely on the 
ground of testimony ; and hence it is a point not to 
be either overthrown or even supported by the natural 
sciences ; but to be believed on the credit of revela- 
tion. " By faith, we understand, the worlds were 
framed by the word of (rod." In all our reasonings, 
this great fact, that in the beginning Grod created and 
completed the heaven and the earth in the space of 
six days, is to be regarded as a starting point, like a 
first truth in philosophy, or an axiom in geometry. 
He, therefore, who so far transcends the legitimate 
object of all true science, as to deny or even to 
exclude the supernatural, must needs take unwar- 
rantable liberties with the word of Grod, and expose 
himself to the charge, if not of downright infidelity, at 
least of rash conjecture, extravagant fancies, and mar- 
vellous credulity. Nothing may be further from the 
intentions of our geologists than to afford material for 
sceptical thoughts ; some of them profess to believe in 
Divine revelation ; but no one can surrender his mind 
to the spirit of theorizing without becoming as unsafe 
a guide in all matters pertaining to philosophy and 
faith, as the partisan of any cause is, in matters of 
conscience and good morals. It is the judgment, 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

rather than the integrity of those who, par eminence, 
claim to be the scientific guardians of the Bible, that 
we are constrained to doubt ; nor can we welcome 
their aid in support of the Mosaic record, if we must 
accommodate its sense to the theories which they, in 
turn, may be induced to advance or to follow. 

A firm, cordial belief in God's revelation to man, 
limits, while it awakens the spirit of philosophic 
inquiry ; and had its study been pursued in connection 
with physical researches, its advocates would have 
been spared the pains of combating many a theory 
which leads, by necessary inference, to its rejection. 
We are not exciting a groundless apprehension ; much 
less do we betray a state of mind in unison 
with such prejudices as were arrayed against Gral- 
lileo. To confound the advocates of the Mosaic 
record with the ignorant, bigoted, and persecuting 
priests of a dark age, is, to say the least, not very con- 
sistent with well-grounded claims to superior acumen 
The discoveries of that much-injured astronomer 
did not conflict with revelation ; but some of our 
modern geological theories clash directly with the 
teachings of Moses. Even to refer the period designated 
by " the beginning" to millions of ages back, in order 
to account for certain stratified formations and fos- 
sil remains, is to contradict the record which refers 
the creation of those vegetable substances of which 
beds of coal are composed, and of those animals of 
which fossils arc discovered, to the third, fifth, and 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

sixth days ; or that the lights of heaven existed long 
before the Mosaic era, and that they then, owing to 
further purification of the atmosphere, on the fourth 
day became visible in the firmament and assumed 
new relations to the newly modified earth, is a suppo- 
sition which cannot be reconciled with the declaration 
that God made two great lights, and then set them in 
the firmament. Hence, among the supporters of 
such thories may be found those who assume the 
ground that their faith in revelation has no connection 
with their views of the work of creation ; who aban- 
don not only the Mosaic account of the creation, but 
the unity of the race, the universality of the Deluge, 
and the reason for the institution of the Sabbath. 
Among this class, too, may be found those who discard 
the scriptural belief that death was the consequence of 
sin, and that animal sacrifices were of divine appoint- 
ment ; and who are wont to disparage the credibility 
of the miraculous portions of the Old Testament, on 
the ground that all the early nations were extremely 
prone to hyperbolize ! Through the tendency of neolo- 
gical views on the one hand, and of geological specu- 
lations on the other, it has become not uncommon to 
represent the Pentateuch as a collection of popular 
traditions, having scarcely any more foundation in fact 
than the legends of classical antiquity ; and, with the 
writings of Herodotus or the poems of Homer, to be 
philosophically referred to an age of fabulous uncer- 
tainty. Sometimes ridicule is employed ; then dif- 



XVI INTRODUCTION . 

ficulties are insinuated under the mask of philoso- 
phy or of science ; and then again, to quiet all appre- 
hensions, we are gravely told that the Bible is not a 
revelation of science ! or that it can be readily 
explained in accordance with geological deductions by 
putting a different construction on this or that part, 
or by resolving the particulars of the Mosaic account 
into general terms or figurative language. But thus 
it is, that, through the medium of the Pentateuch, a 
blow is often struck at Christianity itself. We are 
not deceived ; it will be found on inquiry, that they 
who attach no importance to the Mosaic account in 
order to secure belief in their own theories repect- 
ing the work of creation, are inclined to trace the 
Mosaic enactments to the prior customs of the Egyp- 
tians, and, in some instances, have no faith in the 
inspiration of the Old Testament. 

Let us then thrust the Mosaic record aside, and 
what have we gained ? Does it relieve our laboring 
minds to be able to read that, at a period too remote to 
be measured even by the power of imagination, Grod 
created the primordial elements ? and that, after an 
almost boundless interval of time, he undertook what 
is called " the work of the first day," and which took 
him a thousand years to finish ? Does the fond notion 
of myriads of ages having been employed to render this 
earth a fit habitation for man, relieve us from the 
necessity of admitting some supernatural agency in 
the beginning, or render any more comprehensible 



INTRODUCTION. XV11 

the time and the mode of creative energy in its mate- 
rial manifestations ? Does it exalt our conceptions of 
the great Grod to think, that after experimenting 
through countless ages, at the expense of successive 
dynasties of beasts and reptiles, he found himself 
under the necessity of reducing all his work again to 
chaos, and of doing it all over to adapt its condition, 
and attemper its climate to the reasoning brain of the 
last product of his skill? Or, are we more deeply 
impressed with a sense of his greatness and glory, 
when, by availing ourselves of the kindly proffered 
aids of geology and chemistry, we have contrived to 
exclude all moral ends in the work of creation — thus 
reducing the intelligent immaterial Creator into a 
necessary mechanical principle of motion, groping its 
way through illimitable space, and at last working 
itself up, by chemical affinities, into outward shapes 
and things ? 

For ourselves, the Chaldean cosmogony, in which 
the monster Omoroca fell subdued beneath the victo- 
rious arm of the god Belus, and the world was formed 
out of her substance ; the Hindoo, in which the Divine 
idea deposited in the waters, first with a thought 
created, a productive seed which became an egg y and 
in which Brahma sat inactive a whole year of the 
Creator ; the Egyptian, which derives the visible 
universe from an eternal darkness in a boundless 
abyss ; the Epicurean, which ascribes all things to a 
fortuitous concourse of atoms ; or the Cartesian vorti- 



XV111 INTRODUCTION. 

cal theory, which teaches that a formative circular 
motion was originally impressed on the elements of 
matter, — seems to us not more unworthy of him whom 
we call God than some of the theories of modern 
geology, and certainly quite as worthy of displacing 
the Mosaic record in our belief. 

It is by a comparison of all the pagan cosmogonies 
with that of Moses, that we come to give our judg- 
ment in favor of his account of the work of creation, 
as being the most simple, connected, and intelligible, — 
in every respect free from those wild and distorted 
images or most fanciful conceits, which form the charac- 
teristics of all ancient mythology ; and in like manner, 
it is by looking into our modern cosmogonies, and disco- 
vering their bold assumptions, illogical generalizations, 
and, above all, their flagrant want of consistency, that 
we are led to prize the more highly the Grenesis of 
Moses. 

• 

How unlike the god of modern science is that great 
Being whose account of his creative work his servant 
Moses was commanded to transmit to all coming 
ages ! How presumptuous to divine his unsearchable 
ways by the experiments of the chemist or the classi- 
fications of the geologist ! How preposterous to limit 
his creative energy by those aqueous and igneous 
agents, and those destroying, transporting, and repro- 
ductive agents which some self-complacent theorist 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

boasts of having discovered, and thinks he under- 
stands ! How impossible for the finite mind to rise 
to an adequate conception of his power — 

" Whose word leaped forth at once to its effect ; 
Who called for things that were not, and they came !" 

Because man, with his wondrous knowledge of 
chemical agents and mechanical forces, of sedimentary 
deposits and fossil remains, concludes that the Creator 
of the ends of the earth must have proceeded in a 
particular way and taken a great length of time to 
finish his work, does it follow that his conclusion is 
not a mere presumptuous conjecture ? No ; " ye do 
err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of 
Grod." " His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor 
his ways as our ways." The mysteries of his works 
are as far above our conceptions as the mysteries of 
his nature. 

So far as we can understand, his agency, Grod 
accomplishes his ends by the simplest and most direct 
means : — 

" In human works, though labored on with pain 
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain ; 
In God's, one single can its end produce, 
Yet serves to second too, some other use." 

We delight to contemplate him as seen every where 
in the works of his hands ; to look out on the ever- vary- 
ing brilliancy and grandeur of the landscape ; to gaza 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

on the towering rocks, and the cloud-capped moun- 
tains, and the wide-spread ocean, or to look up to the 
magnificence of worlds on worlds which stud the 
firmament like gems of light, and amid all these 
phenomena to see the evidences of an agent which, 
though invisible to us, is adequate to the production 
of all the physical wonders by which we are surround- 
ed. Natural science, with all its philosophical appa- 
ratus and boasted generalizations, can only secure to 
me a more extended vision, or a more thorough scru- 
tiny ; but it cannot inspire me with more adoring 
conceptions of the great First Cause of all things than 
a few simple expressions that may be gathered 
from the inspired record of Grod's creation. It may 
conduct me to distant worlds, or carry me into the 
dark and cavernous recesses of nature ; it may point 
me to the inscriptions on the rocks, or to the teachings 
of long-buried organisms ; but it can offer nothing, 
do nothing, to impress me with so profound a sense 
of the inscrutable greatness and majesty of the 
Divine- Being — as a poor Hebrew, the son of a bond- 
woman, has done, by the sublime manner in which he 
has announced the work of creation: " In the begin- 
ning (tod created the heaven and the earth :" — a 
declaration which carries its own heaven-born evidence 
with it, flashing like a ray of light across the darkness 
of the unassisted mind, whenever it feels after God. 
Nor less impressive are the succeeding announce- 
ments : And God said, Let there be light anal there 



INTRODUCTION. Xxi 

was light : Let there be a firmament, and there was 
a firmament : Let the waters under the heaven be 
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry 
land appear, and it ivas so. No representation of 
power can be compared with this ; nor has the sub- 
limity of the narration been equalled, much less sur- 
passed, by any subsequent writer. 

He who " spake and it was done, who commanded 
and it stood fast," could have created the world in a 
moment of time ; but such an act would have been 
altogether incomprehensible even to those created 
intelligences who were witnesses of his works, and 
who could not then, as they did when the heavens 
and earth were finished, " have sung together and 
shouted for joy." Nor could the historian have 
added anything to the first verse of Grenesisin, 
explanation of an instantaneous work of such magni- 
tude ; while the bare affirmation of its having: been 
instantly performed, though thus imparting to us the 
knowledge of a fact which the unassisted mind mi^ht 
have vainly essayed to excogitate, would have afforded 
but little satisfaction. 

But while the narrative conveys to us this stupen- 
dous idea of an uncreated omnipotent will, it furnishes 
us with an account of the work of creation which is 
at once comprehensible, instructive, and deeply im- 
pressive. It does in no wise gratify a wanton curiosity, 
nor deviate from the line of its immediate object ; it 
simply imparts to us views of G-od worthy of himself 



XXII INTRODUCTION. 

as the Creator, and views of man in his relations to 
(rod, of the last importance to him in furthering the 
great end of his being ; and thus preserving brevity 
with simplicity, and consistency with strength, while 
uniting the grandest conceptions with all the sober 
dignity of the weightiest truths, it stands like the 
work which it depicts, a mighty and imperishable 
monument to the glory of God the Creator, to be 
seen and read by all his rational and intelligent 
creatures. 

As it must definitively settle the point that the 
world was created, so does it furnish us with the only 
infallible guide in our endeavors to ascertain the 
manner in which the work of creation advanced. 

We may reason from effects to causes, and from 
present to former changes on the earth's surface ; 
but the laws of nature, (if we leave out of view their 
suspension or counteraction during the time of the 
Noachic deluge,) can guide us no farther back 
than to the period when Grod completed his work of 
creation ; because, up to that period, be it when it 
might, the work was conformable to no analogy, but 
carried on in a manner wholly miraculous, What a 
work ! — to create such a world as this ; to fit it up 
with such magnificent furniture and varied conve- 
niences ; to decorate it with such ever- varied scenes of 
beauty and grandeur; to stock it with plants, and 
animals, and birds, and creeping things ; to place at 
it? head a being full formed after the image of his 



INTRODUCTION, XX11I 

Maker— all alike, and in their order, prepared for their 
appropriate offices, through successive seasons, from 
age to age. What a Mind ! containing in itself the 
archetypes of all the forms, both of animate and inani- 
mate things, which it called into existence by the Word 
of his power, without either confusion or mistake — 'Com- 
prehending all the parts of his creation, whether great 
or small — -discerning all the qualities and uses of each 
and every object, whether separate or in combination 
— determining on the nature, proportions, and action 
of the elements, and on the operations and movements 
of all created existences, without deviation or hin- 
drance, so long as the earth revolved on its axis, or the 
sun gladdened it with his genial rays ! And what a 
day that, on which Grod, the Almighty Maker of 
heaven and earth, rested from his six days' work of 
creation ! He who had performed such a work, has 
rights which may not be impugned, and purposes 
which cannot be frustrated — is infinitely worthy to be 
exalted to the throne of the Universe and to be held 
in everlasting remembrance by all his creatures ; and 
to answer these great ends, the Sabbath was infixed 
in the order of Creation, and the reason for its insti- 
tution reiterated in the hearing of successive genera- 
tions, as often as Grod's commandments to mankind 
were repeated : " For in six da}^s the Lord made 
heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and 
rested the seventh dav — -wherefore the Lord blessed 
the Sabbath-day and hallow T ed it." Yes ; (rod had 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

higher ends in his work of creation than to furnish 
materials to men in after ages to theorize as to the 
manner in which the work advanced, or the time in 
which it was completed. This act asserts and attests 
at once his existence and his rights as the sovereign 
Ruler and Judge of all the earth ; it proclaims him 
to be, as He is, the providential and moral governor 
of the world, and bespeaks for him the homage and 
obedience of all his rational creatures : it was the 
manifestation of his eternal power and Grodhead for 
purposes which the finite mind cannot fully com- 
prehend — the initial step in the boundless range 
of his operations for the glory of his own incommuni- 
cable Name, and the ultimate and perfect good of all 
the virtuous intelligences of his vast empire ! 

It follows, then, (and we write it with all due 
solemnity,) that whatever militates against the inspir- 
ed record of the work of creation, cannot be regard 
as harmless theory. It is treason in God's world 
against Grod's moral government ; leading to a denial 
of his rights and to the rejection of his Word. We 
cannot maintain our high allegiance, and embrace 
any theory which would rob him of the glory due to 
his name ; nor can any theory be true in explanation 
of his works, which is opposed by the teachings, and 
at variance with the authority of his Word. 

Such beinsf our views, we have consented, at the 
request of our respected author, to express them in 
the form of this introduction to his work. His pages 



INTKODTTCTION. XXV 

may have few attractions for those who have been 
fascinated by the romances of geology ; and his argu- 
ments may fail to convince the advocates of modern 
theories — especially the few who have so laboriously 
aimed to enlighten the Christian public, and 
impose a new version of the Mosaic account. " I 
have written a book," said a famous theorist, " and 
therefore I cannot change ;" and something of the kind 
may prejudice the judgment of many a geologist in 
relation to our author's work : nor may it repress that 
spirit of theorizing which knows no restraint from 
deference to revealed religion ; but its perusal, we 
trust, will serve to relieve the minds of such as have 
become embarrassed by the astounding assumptions 
of some geological writers, and to disarm the force of 
gratuitous theories over those who have had but 
little acquaintance with the subject in its true aspects 
and relations. 

Our author has brought to his task a mind well- 
stored by reading, and highly disciplined by habits of 
patient and independent thought. In some respects, 
therefore, the arguments which he employs are 
new, and presented in a very forcible manner ; 
while the difficulties to which the more recent geolo- 
gical theories are liable in his view, at last become so 
obvious to the reflecting reader as to prepare him to 
follow the author, and with him to account, on Scrip- 
tural principles, for those phenomena which have mis- 
led certain scientific men ; and to regard the Scriptu- 



XXVI INTKODTTCTION. 

ral explanation of geological facts as liable to fewer 
objections than the most plausible theory which has 
yet been broached in the cabinet of the geologist, or 
the laboratory of the chemist. Even should the au- 
thor's reasoning, in some of its points, not satisfy every 
reader, nor afford him all the light he may desire ; still, 
he will at least pause, before he succumbs to the 
dogmatism of a Smith, or yields his judgment to the 
poetic imaginings of a Miller. 

That an adherence to the Mosaic account of the crea- 
tion, however, will not obviate every difficulty which 
may be proposed, is quite certain ; that we may be 
unable to explain some of the phenomena to which 
geology points, is not improbable ; but such considera- 
tions afford no more valid grounds for departing from 
the teachings of the Bible in relation to the work of 
creation, than for rejecting any one of the great doc- 
trines which it has revealed to our faith. 

Things hard to be understood by the finite mind 
will be found in the works as well as in the "Word of 
an infinitely wise and all powerful Being ; and with as 
much propriety might we reject his revelation because 
of physical evils which we cannot reconcile with our 
abstract notions of the Divine holiness and goodness, as 
because its account of creation does not accord with 
the conclusions which some geologists have " felt 
constrained" to adopt. 

In view, then, of the sceptical tendency of certain 
works on the subject of geology, and more particularly 



INTRODUCTION". XXV11 

the fact, that some of the professed friends of the 
Bible, taking for granted the assumptions of geologists, 
have made admissions fatal to the obvious drift and 
integrity of the Mosaic record, we deem it a privi- 
lege to be able to announce to the Christian public 
V A Treatise on the Epoch of Creation," which, while 
disclosing no ordinary acquaintance with scientific 
inquiries, is true to the Word of God. What do the 
Scriptures teach respecting the work of creation ? is 
the one great question considered in this trea- 
tise. It brings to the support of the Mosaic 
record, arguments drawn from the laws of Biblical 
interpretation in relation to the use of the term, begin- 
ning ; from the positive statement of the sacred his- 
torian, that in the space of six days the generations 
of the heaven and earth were completed ; from the 
fact that throughout the Scriptures, the formation of 
man is referred to the same period, or included in the 
six days' work of creation ; from the reason assigned 
for the institution of the Sabbath, and for the stress 
afterwards laid on this fact, growing out of the an- 
tagonism of all idolatrous systems of religion to the 
acknowledgment of God's rights as the Creator ; 
from the fact that the delegated work of Christ is 
referred to the same period with the creation, and 
from the glory and honor due and ascribed to Him, 
" without whom was not anything made that was 
made." 

Such are the author's main positions ; and if they 



XXY111 INTRODUCTION. 

are untenable, then the Sabbath can no longer be re* 
garded as the divine memorial of God's six days' work 
of creation : we must be governed in all our inquiries 
on the subject of creation by our knowledge of physical 
laws, not by God's written Word ; and, surrendering 
our minds to the " principles of geology," we are 
left, not only to doubt the truthfulness of the Mosaic 
record of the creation, but to incline to the opinion 
that matter itself is eternal ! 

R. W. D. 
New York, July 7 f 1851. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Observations relating to the Subject of Inquiry — The Main Ques- 
tion not Involved in the Facts or Inductions of Geological 
Science — Relation of it to the Scriptures - - - 33 



CHAPTER II. 

The Epoch of Creation according to the Scriptures — Import of the 
phrase " In the beginning" — Usage of that and analogous phrases 
— The Sabbath appointed to be observed as a public Acknowledg- 
ment and Attestation, that Jehovah created all things in the 
space of Six Days — The Significance and Importance of that 
Fact in relation to the Rival System of Idolatry - - 48 

CHAPTER III. 

The references to the Work of the Creation in the New, in Har- 
mony with those of the Old Testament— Coincidence of the 
first verses of the Gospel of John with the first of Genesis — Inci- 
dental allusions to the Epoch of Creation — That Man and the 
Material Worlds were created at the same Epoch, implied in all 
that relates to the Work of Redemption, and in all the Ascrip- 
tions of Praise to the Creator for the Perfection of his Works - 77 



XXX CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PAGE 

Notice of some of the Physical Difficulties of theGeologic Theory — 
The probable quantity of matter in the Sedimentary Formations 
computed in cubic miles ; compared with the quantity of unstra- 
tified rock existing above the sea level; and with the area of the 
existing oceans — The production of both Marine and Terrestrial 
Plants and Animals, and the Diffusion and Fossilization of them 
in the Sedimentary Strata, according to the Geologic Theory, 
incredible and impossible - - - - - 94 



CHAPTER V. 

Notices of some portions of the chapter "On the bearing of Final 
Causes in Geologic History, in the " Footprints of the Creator," 
by Hugh Miller— His inference of successive creations from 
the relative proportion of Brain to the Spinal Cord in different 
races of Animals — His Version of the Fourth Commandment - 115 



CHAPTER VI. 

Notice of Dr. Hitchcock — Religion of Geology - 143 

CHAPTER VII. 

The aversion of Geologists to the supposition of Miracles in the 
production of Geological changes — The necessity on their hypo- 
thesis of numerous and stupendous miracles — Reference to the 
theory of Doctor John Pye Smith, of a limited extent of the 
Deluge — Inexplicable facts of Geology — Pebbles — Coal — " Course 
of Creation" — Extinction of Races — Preposterous assumptions 
and inferences of Geologists — Their omission of reference to the 
moral government and purposes of the Creator - 168 



CONTEXTS. XXXI 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 

The Theory of the Creation, at first, of only the Primordial Ele- 
ments of things considered ----- 212 



CHAPTER IX. 

No theory of the mode of Causation necessary to the credit of 
Revelation, or to our faith in it — The possibility of the former 
Continents with their Animal and Vegetable Races, having been 
merged and suspended in the waters of the Deluge, and trans- 
ferred to the bed of the former seas, and there deposited in the 
existing strata considered. - 223 

CHAPTER X. 
Reference to the Supreme authority and importance of the 
Scripures --...»_ 253 

Appendix -------- 257 



m Public Library. 
MAY 3 - 1900 

WASHINGTON, D. O. 

THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 



CHAPTEE I. 

Observations relating to the Subject of Inquiry — The Main Question 
not Involved in the Facts or Inductions of Geological Science — Rela- 
tion of it to the Scriptures. 

The geological theory assigns to the physical world 

a far higher antiquity than it allows to the human 

race. Many who believe in the inspiration of the 

Scriptures, adopt this theory, to avoid the difficulties 

which geological science is supposed to present to the 

doctrine which ascribes the creation of man and that 

of the earth to one and the same epoch ; and they 

endeavor so to construe the language of Scripture as 

to make it harmonize with what they suppose to be 

the unavoidable conclusions of science. If they 

regard the Scriptures with the reverence due to them, 

they must yield to the required interpretations, under 

the impression that the credit of revelation itself 

demands them, that they affect no essential doctrine, 

that the alleged conclusions of science can in no 

other way be met, and that this course may conciliate 
2* 



34 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

and win the confidence and faith of scientific men, 
who otherwise would be in danger of rejecting the 
Bible altogether. 

In pursuing this course, however, in relation to tho 
epoch of creation, they make concessions in construing 
the language of Scripture, which, if made in construing 
that language on other scriptural subjects, may lead 
to the subversion of every statement and doctrine by 
which the Bible is distinguished as a revelation from 
Grod. They seem, on the one hand, to forget that the 
laws of language are as fixed and as intelligible as those 
of any science ; and on the other, that the geologist, 
in his inquiries, is restricted to physical phenomena as 
seen under the operation of physical causes, or natural 
laws, to the exclusion of every thing supernatural. 
The phenomena of his science are therefore studied 
with sole reference to those natural causes which are 
operating to produce the observed or analogous results. 
To admit the present or past operation of a super- 
natural cause, would be to surpass the bounds of phy- 
sical enquiry. Thus in studying the sedimentary for- 
mations which constitute perhaps three quarters of the 
solid surface of the globe, the geologist discovers that 
there are in operation natural causes which arc gra- 
dually producing somewhat similar deposits. Those 
causes only fall within his observation. They are the 
appropriate natural causes of such effects ; and if 



MIRACLES NOT KNOWN TO SCIENCE. 35 

allowed to have been in operation long enough, are 
supposed adequate to have produced the results in 
question. If, as a scientific geologist, he ascribes the 
facts which he discovers to a supernatural cause — a 
cause not within his observation — he passes out of his 
own field of inquiry into that of revelation ; out of the 
province of science into that of theology. His busi- 
ness is with physical phenomena, which come directly 
within his own observation ; with facts, and their rela- 
tions and connections. It does not invade, and has 
nothing to do with, other departments of knowledge. 
If any supernatural cause has been at any period, or 
for any reason, interposed, to produce the facts which 
he observes ; if any miracle has been wrought, the 
consideration of it is not w T ithin his province. It belongs 
to a different department. He waives the subject as 
inappropriate to him, and out of his sphere. "Whether 
miracles are possible, whether there has ever been a 
necessity or sufficient reason for them, or whether they 
have ever actually been interposed, it is not his object 
to enquire. It is the business of the physical science 
which he pursues, to account for all the facts observed 
on natural principles, and by means of ordinary phy- 
sical laws. If they can be so accounted for, the occur- 
rence of miracles in their production ought not to be 
supposed. To suppose them would be unscientific and 
unnecessary. Grreat progress, it is argued, has already 



36 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

been made in accounting for the facts of geology in 
this manner ; and if in some cases a satisfactory 
explanation has not been rendered, the defect may be 
reasonably ascribed to our remaining ignorance of phy- 
sical causes and their operations. In view of what has 
been done, it may be hoped that further researches 
will clear up what now remains obscure. "When that 
is accomplished, the exact truth will be scientifically 
established, and that of course will not conflict with 
the real meaning of any Divinely inspired statement. 
In taking this view of the matter, the geologist pro- 
ceeds upon the assumption, or conviction, that the 
conclusions which he has arrived at in regard, for ex- 
ample, to the mode in which the sedimentary forma- 
tions, with their imbedded fossils, were formed, and 
consequently, in regard to the extreme remoteness of 
the era of creation, are true, and entitled to much the 
same confidence as mathematical demonstrations. And 
under such impression, he has no difficulty in conclud- 
ing that the earth, in order to a sufficient lapse of 
time to admit of the gradual formation of the sedimen- 
tary deposits, must have been created long before the 
creation of man ; and if it is the apparent import of 
the Mosaic narrative, that they were created simul- 
taneously in the " six days ;" such, if that narrative is 
inspired, cannot be its real import. It must be so 
construed as to harmonize with the conclusions which 



SUPPOSITIONS OF GEOLOGISTS. 37 

the geologist has adopted. He thinks those conclu- 
sions so far settled, and entitled to such confidence, as 
to make it necessary to the believer in revelation to 
construe the Mosaic record in accordance with them. 
In other words, he deems it more likely that the appa- 
rent is not the true meaning of that record, than that 
any other besides natural, ordinary, physical causes 
have been employed to prod ace the sedimentary for- 
mations, or other phenomena with which his inquiries 
are concerned. If there is a defect anywhere, he 
supposes it must be in the written account of the 
creation, and not in his ascription of changes to the 
slow operation of natural causes. He supposes it to 
be more likely that a written account, in a dead and 
very ancient language, should appear to mean what it 
does not mean, that it should be figurative or mystical, 
that it should be misconstrued through ignorance, or 
by reason of its brevity or other peculiarities, than 
that he should be mistaken in his inferences from the 
geological phenomena of the earth. The allowance 
out of a past eternity, of periods of time sufficient to 
admit of all the observed phenomena being produced 
by the gradual operations of these natural causes, 
appears to him to be less objectionable, more scientific, 
and more satisfactory every way, than to suppose 
that supernatural causes have been interposed. 

Resting in this view, he does not feel himself called 



38 THE EPOCH OE CEEATION. 

on to enquire whether the inspired record, construed 
by the invariable laws of language, has not higher 
claims, and is not of more certain import, than his 
inference from the facts of physical science considered 
as the result of the ordinary laws of nature ; whether 
that record does not inform us of moral reasons for the 
creation of the earth and for great changes in its con- 
dition, and allege the occurrence, for moral reasons, 
of supernatural interpositions, on various occasions ; 
whether the admission of moral, in connection with 
physical, reasons and causes, in all the works of crea- 
tion and providence, and in the moral and physical 
government of the world, is not absolutely indispen- 
sable, if the Creator exercises such government ; since 
a moral disconnected from a physical government, over 
creatures having physical natures and in close alliance 
with physical things, is undoubtedly impossible — 
whether, in the administration of such a government, 
operations which we call supernatural are any less 
natural to the Creator, or any less likely to be inter- 
posed when there is a moral reason, or any sufficient- 
exigency or occasion for them, than operations which 
occur in conformity to what we call the laws of nature ; 
since, in the administration of his government, the 
latter, as truly as the former, are employed and con- 
trolled by the Creator. Whether in the case of the 
changes which are disclosed by geological research, 



MORAL REASONS OVERLOOKED. 39 

the lapse of such rounds of duration, as are supposed 
to have been necessary for their production, is not 
more improbable and incredible than that they should 
have been hastened by supernatural interference, 
especially if they are considered as having taken place 
under the administration and control of a Being 
of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness ; and if, sup- 
posing such prolonged periods to have elapsed, and to 
have been succeeded by a new creation, including man, 
the comparative uselessness and nullity of the earlier 
changes are taken into view. "Whether in accounting 
for the supposed gradual formation of the sedimentary 
rocks, the distribution in them of marine and terres- 
trial plants and animals, and the preservation of their 
most delicate forms, there may not be difficulties 
which no operation of the laws of nature could possi- 
bly overcome — difficulties in respect to the supply of 
the peculiar materials of the respective strata, the 
supply of relics from the land and sea together in the 
same rocks, and the conservation of them during the 
long periods required for the inhumation of each and 
every one of them, by the slow operation of natural 
causes, to overcome which would require a stupendous, 
universal, and constant supernatural interposition. 



The argument, or inference, of the geologist in 
support of the high antiquity of the earth, is not in 



40 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

itself by any means conclusive ; and the theory which 
it involves is obnoxious to very grave objections besides 
those derived from the Scripture record, and to still 
more formidable objections from the teachings of the 
sacred oracles. 

The question at issue is, whether the Mosaic account 
of the creation is an account of the original creation 
out of nothing of the material worlds and all that in 
them is ; or whether the narrative of the " six days" 
is an account only of the remodelling of the earth — 
one of those worlds — out of the materials of the same 
earth created at an earlier period, supposed to be indi- 
cated by the phrase " in the beginning." 

This question is not of a nature to be determined by 
scientific discoveries or deductions. It involves con- 
siderations of which physical science is not cognizant, 
and does not in any way include. It involves the fact 
itself of a creation of the heavens and the earth. 
The only probable reason which geology furnishes in 
favor of the supposition that the earth was created, or 
had a beginning at any period, however remote, is, as 
represented by Dr. Buckland, that beneath the lowest 
stratum of sedimentary rocks no fossil remains of 
plants or animals have been discovered, and therefore 
it is inferred that the deposition of such fossils must 
have had a beginning, and thence that plants and 
animals themselves had a beginning. From this rea- 



CBEATION NOT A QUESTION OF SCEENCE. 41 

soning, though he does not formally state the inference, 
we seem to be expected to infer that the earth itself, 
as well as its plants and animals, had a beginning. 
" We argue thus," he says : " It is demonstrated from 
geology that there was a period when no organic beings 
had existence ; these organic beings must therefore 
have had a beginning subsequently to that period ; and 
where is that beginning to be found but in the will 
and fiat of an intelligent and all-wise Creator."* 
The demonstration, however, as he afterwards admits, 
relates only to those organized beings whose fossil 
remains are discovered. Geology neither does nor can 
demonstrate that there were not earlier races of organ- 
ized beings than those whose fossil remains are now 
discovered ; races indefinitely numerous, diversified, and 
chronologically separated, whose remains are beneath 
the rocks which contain the fossils of modern geology, 
and therefore have not been discovered ; or have been 
destroyed by the melting up of those lower rocks, or have 
otherwise been obliterated by the progress of change, 
or have ceased to exist, under circumstances and in a 
condition of the earth which precluded their being fossil- 
ized. G-eology, therefore, furnishes no conclusive evi- 
dence, nor, at best, anything more than a faint and doubt- 
ful probability that the earth has not existed and been 
occupied with plants and animals from eternity. The 

* Bridgewater Treatise. 



42 THE EPOCH OF OKEATION. 

most probable inference from it, on supposition that 
immeasurable rounds of duration were required for the 
formation of the strata in which fossils are now dis- 
covered, would be that the earth had existed for ever. 
On this head nothing can resolve or satisfy us but a 
revelation from Him who created the world ; and who, 
according to the revelation which he has made, created 
it as part and parcel of a system of things which 
included moral as well as physical agencies and ends,* 
and which, alike under his moral and physical gov- 
ernment, he has ever been carrying into effect. The 
question, like that concerning the unity of the human 
race, can be determined only by revelation. The two 
subjects belong to one and the same system of things, 
and are associated in the same moral purposes and 
government, in the progress of which the dead are to 
be raised, and the earth is to be renovated, not by a 
natural or gradual process, but by supernatural inter- 
position. 



When we learn from a venerable professor of one 
of our oldest Literary Institutions, that " he cares 
not whether the earth was created perfect, or was 
formed out of nebular matter, or elaborated out of 
primordial elements ; the manner and epoch of its 
origin having nothing to do with his faith in the 
Scriptures ;" and when we have it under the sanction 



REASONS FOR THIS INQUIRY. 43 

of one of the most respected professors in one of the 
oldest and soundest of our theological seminaries, that 
' ' There is no need to be much concerned about the age 
of the globe on which our race resides. The chro- 
nology of Moses is that of the human race, and not 
that of the material part of the earth. All that is 
necessary to relieve the sacred history from every 
objection on this ground is to interpret the first sen- 
tence in the Bible as stating the fact, that the heavens 
and the earth were created by Grod, without stating at 
what time, and considering the six days' creation to 
relate to the preparation, and organization of the 
Chaotic Materialism into a form and condition to suit 
its new inhabitants :" we may reasonably expect it to 
be asked, Why should we concern ourselves about 
these questions ? Of what consequence can it be to 
us, whether the earth was created infinite ages, or 
only 6000 years ago ? The answer is, that the 
question very nearly concerns the supremacy and 
glory of the Creator, and the faith, reverence, and 
homage of men. He has made known the facts in a 
revelation in which the creation of the heavens and 
earth holds the first and prominent place ; as being 
the basis of his rights and prerogatives over his crea- 
tures as their providential and moral governor ; and 
as the initiatory step in the wide and endless range of 
his plan of operations and manifestations to the whole 



4:4: THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

universe of intelligent agents. In this world to which 
that revelation was made, the question has, from the 
era of the apostasy, been under debate, whether the 
self-existent, the Jehovah of the Bible, was, indeed, 
the Creator of the material worlds, and all creatures ; 
or, whether they were created by a good or an evil 
angel, or other creature ; or whether they were eter- 
nal, and owed their successive races of organized 
beings, and their changes of condition, to a coeval and 
inherent law of development. If the worlds were 
created, if their existence was originated, if they were 
brought into being by the will of an intelligent Being, 
then he, as their Creator, necessarily and of right is 
their proprietor, lawgiver, and ruler, and unqualified 
homage, obedience, and praise are due to him on that 
account. But it is of the essence of apostasy and 
rebellion, to deny those prerogatives and rights, and 
to refuse to yield such homage and obedience ; and of 
such denial and refusal the history of the world almost 
wholly consists. And if out of deference to a physical 
theory which, to say the least, leaves the fact of any 
beginning or creation of the world in extreme doubt 
and uncertainty, we consent so to modify the revela- 
tion which the Creator himself has made, as to sever, 
by incalculable periods, the creation itself from the 
exercise and assertion of the rights, prerogatives, and 
moral purposes of the Creator, as Lawgiver and Moral 



CREATION AND MORAL GOVERNMENT. 45 

governor, we so far really or virtually deny those 
prerogatives, rights, and purposes. For we thereby 
invade or annul the revealed plan, which most empha- 
tically and comprehensively includes and connects the 
creation of all things with that of man, and on that 
ground asserts the prerogatives and rights of moral 
government, and claims unqualified homage and 
obedience. 

Now, since geology, while it acquaints us with 
innumerable facts concerning the physical condition 
of the earth, is wholly incompetent to explain the 
conditions or circumstances in which, the reasons for 
which, or the mode of operation by which, those facts 
were produced ; it is necessary to have recourse to the 
inspired oracles as the only means of attaining any 
satisfaction. 

The Holy Scriptures furnish us with a detailed 
account of the work of creation, as well as of the 
wondrous works of Providence and Grace. The crea- 
tion of the heavens and earth, and all that in them is, 
being necessarily in the order of Divine manifestations 
and purposes, before and preliminary to the works of 
providence and redemption, is first narrated in the 
sacred oracles. The Creator himself being also the 
Lawgiver, Ruler, and Revealer, and the creation being 
the ground of his prerogatives and rights as providen- 
tial and moral Governor ; his revealed account of the 



4:6 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

work of creation we should expect would be not only 
in harmony with his other works, and with his entire 
scheme of operations, but in itself as intelligible as 
any other portion of the history of his acts. And so 
undoubtedly it is. It ascertains to us the fact of the 
creation of all things out of nothing, the order in 
which they were produced, and their relations and 
connections with his moral purposes and administra- 
tions. 

This narrative apparently teaches us that the 
heavens and earth, and all their hosts, including man, 
were created at one and the same epoch — in the space 
of six days. The geologists infer from the facts dis- 
closed by their researches, that the material world 
must have existed many myriads of ages prior to the 
creation of man. To reconcile the Mosaic narrative 
with the supposition of such earlier date, they conclude 
that the first verse of Genesis constitutes, unconnected 
with the narrative of the six days, a distinct announce- 
ment that the heaven and earth were created at an 
indefinitely remote period, indicated by the word 
" beginning." On this hypothesis they suppose that 
revelation and the geological theory concerning the 
creation may be consistent with eaoh other. No other 
announcements of the sacred oracles are supposed by 
them to be in conflict with geology. The difficulty 
relates to the phrase, " in the beginning ," which they 



SCKXPTTJKE NAREATIVE. 47 

suppose imports and refers to a commencement of 
time long anterior to the six days, as if the verse were 
read, In the beginning of time Grod created the heaven 
and the earth. 

That they are mistaken in this supposition, an 
examination of the subject will, it is presumed, satis- 
factorily show. And it may appear, that believing all 
Scripture to have been given by inspiration of Grod, 
and that his rights and prerogatives as moral Grovernor 
are founded in the fact of his bein2: the Creator and 
upholder of all things, it as truly concerns us to know 
what relates to the work of creation and its epoch, as 
to know what relates to the allegiance due to him 
from us, or what relates to our moral condition, the 
method of recovery, or the destiny which awaits us. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Epoch of Creation according to the Scriptures — Import of the 
phrase. " In the beginning" — Usage of that and analogous phrases — 
The Sabbath appointed to be observed as a public acknowledgment 
and attestation, that Jehovah created all things in the space of six 
days — The significance and importance of that fact in relation to the 
rival system of Idolatry. 

The Hebrew word, Gren. i. 1, rendered in our Eng- 
lish version, " In the beginning," occurs eighteen times 
in the Books of Moses, and elsewhere thirty-two times 
in fourteen other books of the Old Testament. But 
it does not in any one of these instances denote an 
epoch, or any date or space of time. It is employed 
only to denote the head of a class, the commencement 
of a process, or the first of a series of things, persons, 
acts, or events. The evidence of this fact will demon- 
strate that the first verse of Genesis does not refer to 
a remote anterior creation of the heavens and the 
earth, bat is as certainly as any succeeding verse of 
the chapter a part of the narrative of the "six days" 
work of creation. 



THE PHRASE " IN THE BEGINNING." 49 

In twenty-one out of the whole number of instances 
in which the original word occurs, it is translated "first- 
fruits," or first of the fruits of the land — corn, wine, 
&c. — in all which it is evidently restricted to the pro- 
ducts or things then existing, or the series with which 
they were immediately connected. Thus : 

" The first of the first-fruits of thy land" — the be- 
ginning of thy land, the products earliest ripe— 
" thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy 
God." — Exod. xxiii. 19, and xxiv. 26. 

" When ye come into the land which I give you, 
and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring 
a sheaf of the first-fruits" — the beginning — " of your 
harvest unto the priest." — Levit. xxiii. 10. 

" All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, 
and of the wheat, the first-fruits"— the beginning — 
"of them, they shall offer unto the Lord." — Numb, 
xviii. 12. 

"'Ye shall offer up a cake of the first" — the begin- 
ning — " of your dough for a heave-offering." Of the 
first" — the beginning — " of your dough ye shall give 
unto the Lord a heave-offering." — Numb. xv. 20, 21. 

" Amalek was the first" — the beginning — " of the 
nations." — Ibid. xxiv. 20. 

" The first" — the beginning — " of the fleece of thy 
sheep shalt thou give him." — Deut. xviii. 4, and again 
xviii. 4. 

3 



50 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

" Thou shalt take of the first" — the beginning — 
" of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring 
of thy land, that the Lord thy Grod giveth thee." — Deut. 
xxvi. 2. 

" I have brought the first-fruits," — the beginning, 
" of the land."— Deut. xxvi. 10. 

" The children of Israel brought in abundance, the 
first-fruits," the beginning, " of corn, wine, and oil, 
and honey, and of all the increase of the field." 
— 2 Chron. xxxi. 5. 

" Honor the Lord with thy substance, and with the 
first-fruits," the beginning, " of all thine increase." 
— Prov. iii. 9. 

" They shall not sell of it, neither exchange, nor 
alienate, the first-fruits," — the beginning — " of the 
land." — Ezekiel xlviii. 

See also Levit. ii. 12 ; Nehemiah x. 37, and xii. 
44 ; Jer. ii. 3 ; Ezekiel xx. 40 and 44 ; xxx. twice ; 
Hosea ix. 10. 

The offering of first-fruits was a duty to be per- 
formed immediately on commencing the harvest. 
The first-fruits were the first sheaves, the beginning, 
of the harvest. And as the harvest was accom- 
plished by a continued series of operations of which 
the gathering of the first sheaves was the beginning, 
so the work of creation was accomplished by a series 
of operations during six days ; of which operations the 



"IN THE BEGINNING" — USAGE. 51 

creation of the celestial bodies and the earth, was the 
first, the beginning. 

In the Mosaic narrative, the fact that Grod created 
the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them 
is, is the chief thing asserted. But he effected the 
work of creation by a series of acts. The first-fruits 
of his creative energy, the first act in the series of his 
acts as Creator, the beginning, was the creation of the 
earth and the heavenly bodies ; next light, and suc- 
cessively plants and trees, marine and aerial creatures, 
land animals, and man. Intermediately the waters 
were divided, the seas separated from the dry land, 
and the light made to radiate from the sun, moon, 
and stars, to illumine the revolving earth. Hence the 
same word which was employed to denote the first in 
the series of creative acts, was employed to denote the 
first in the series of the reaper's acts in gathering his 
harvest ; and the first verse of Grenesis would have 
conveyed the same meaning as now, had it read : 
" Grod created all things; the celestial orbs and the 
earth were the first products of his creative energy !" 

This illustration of the usage and import of the 
word in question is confirmed by its use elsewhere. In 
eighteen instances it is translated " In the beginning, 
from the beginning," &c, where its import and refer- 
ence are manifestly the same as in the passages above 
cited. For example : 



52 THE EPOCH OP CREATION*. 

" The beginning 1 of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel." 
— Gren. x. 10. The building of Babel was the first pro- 
ceeding, the first-fruity the commencement of that 
series of measures by which Nimrod founded and 
erected a kingdom. 

" Reuben, thou art my first-born, the beginning 
of my strength." — Gen. xlix. 3. Reuben was the first 
of twelve sons, the first-fruit of Jacob's strength. 

" From the beginning of the year even unto the 
end of the year." — Deut. xi. 12. The beginning of a 
year is the first of a series of days which compose a 
year, and which immediately succeed each other. 

" Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter 
end should greatly increase." •• The Lord blessed 
the latter end of Job more than his beginning." — Job 
viii. 7, and xlii. 12. " The fear of the Lord is the 
beginning of wisdom." — Psalm cxi. 10. " The fear 
of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." — Prov. 
i. 7. " The beginning of strife is as when one let- 
teth out water." — Prov. xvii. 14. " The Lord pos- 
sessed me in the beginning of his way." — Prov. viii. 
22. " Better is the end of a thing than the beginning 
thereof." — Eccl. vii. 8. " Declaring the end from the 
beginning." — Isa. xivi. 10. " In the beginning of the 
reign of Jehoiakim." — Isa. xxvi. 1, and xxvii. 1. " In 
the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah." — Jer. xxviii. 
1, and xlix. 34. " In the beginning God created the 



THE "BEGINNING-'' NOT AN EPOCH. 53 

heavens and the earth." — Gren. i. 1. See also Deut 
xxi. 17 ; Micah i. 13. 

In nine instances the same word is translated 
"chief" as chief of the ways of Grod ; chief of the 
offerings ; chief of their strength ; chief of the nations ; 
chief of the children of Ammon. And in one of the 
remaining cases of its occurrence it is rendered " the 
first part ;" and in the other, " the principal thingP 

Now to suppose that the act which was first in that 
series of acts which brought into existence the works 
of creation, was separated from the second act in that 
series by an interval of countless myriads of ages, is, so 
far as the invariable usage of this word determines its 
meaning, no less preposterous than to suppose that the 
gathering of the first sheaves of each annual harvest 
was separated from the remainder of the same harvest 
by a similar lapse of ages ; that the building of Babel 
was separated by a like interval from the other pro- 
ceedings of Nimrod in founding his kingdom ; that 
the birth of Jacob's first son was in like manner sepa- 
rated from that of the others ; that the first day of a 
year was separated from the ensuing days of the same 
year, and contemplated as immeasurably earlier in 
time ; or that the beginning of a king's reign might 
mean an epoch earlier by incalculable periods than the 
day of his birth. 

It is thus conclusively evident that Dr. Bnckland, 



54 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

Dr. Smith, and others, who assume that the phrase 
" In the beginning" signifies a distant epoch or point 
of time indefinitely earlier than the " six days," 
have totally mistaken or overlooked the meaning and 
object of the original word ; it being manifest, from 
the usage and connection of it with the context, in 
every instance in which it occurs in the Old Testament 
Scriptures, that its import and object are not in any 
instance to denote, or refer to any epoch, date, or rela- 
tion of time whatever. And if they are thus mistaken 
in regard to the meaning of that word, then the first 
verse of the first chapter of Genesis, equally with the 
verses which succeed it, is part of the narrative of the 
creation of all things in the space of six days ; and if 
geology, as a science, teaches that the earth was 
created at an earlier epoch than man, it can neither 
derive any countenance from the first verse of Gfenesis, 
nor be reconciled with the narrative of the six days. 

But there are in the Scriptures many other evi- 
dences to the same effect. The creation of the world 
and of man is often asserted or referred to in terms 
and connections which wholly forbid any other conclu- 
sion. 

In the New Testament, the words corresponding 
with that which in the first of Genesis is translated 
" beginning," are uniformly employed in the same 



NEW TESTAMENT USAGE. 55 

manner, and in like restricted connection, with the 
things affirmed in the immediate context. Thus : 

" He which made mankind in the beginning, made 
them male and female." — Matthew xix. 4. 

" From the beginning of the creation Grod made 
them male and female." — Mark x. 6. 

" Moses suffered you to put away your wives ; but 
from the beginning it was not so." — Matth. xxiv. 8. 

" These are the beginning of sorrows." — Matth. 
xxiv. 8. 

" The beginning of the Gospel." — Mark i. 1. 

" In those days shall be affliction such as was not 
from the beginning of the creation, which Grod created 
unto this time." — Mark xiii. 19. 

" This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana." — 
John ii. 11. 

These passages, without citing others to the same 
effect, clearly show that the original words are used 
not to denote an epoch or date of time, but to distin- 
guish the first of a class or succession of things. 
Mankind were created male and female at the begin- 
ning of the race — the first individuals of the race 
were so created. Moses allowed a practice which was 
not allowed at the beginning — -the commencement of 
social relations. The first of a series of afflictions, 
and the first sentence written in the narrative of the 



56 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

Gospel, respectively mark the commencement of a 
class of things, not a date or epoch in time. Affliction 
to be endured by a portion of the human race, exceed- 
ing any since the beginning of the creation, doubtless 
means that creation which comprised the heavens, the 
earth, and the first of such creatures as were to endure 
the affliction predicted. For a comparison of what they 
were to endure could not be made with anything that 
happened ages before the first of their race were 
created. The beginning of miracles was the first of a 
series of supernatural interpositions. 

Thus we are again shut up to the conclusion that 
the narrative of the six days, in the first chapter of 
Genesis, includes the first verse of that chapter 
equally with the other verses : and that the celestial 
orbs and the earth were created at that, and not at an 
earlier epoch. 

Accordingly, because Grod created the heavens and 
the earth, the sea and all that in them is. in six days. 
and rested the seventh day. He blessed and hallowed 
that as a day of rest for man, and enjoined on him 
the observance of it. His moral government being 
founded in his prerogatives and rights as Creator. 
He alleges his creation of all things in six days as the 
reason for his hallowing the seventh day, and requir- 
ing man to remember and keep it. 

The Moral Law, announced to the Israelites from 



THE MOKAL LAW AND THE " SIX DAYS." 57 

Sinai in a voice which shook the earth, and amid the 
most awful signals and attestations of the presence of 
the Creator and Lawgiver, is as unmistakable in its 
meaning, as it is comprehensive and emphatic in its 
terms. " Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 
Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the 
seventh, day is the Sabbath [rest] of the Lord thy 
Grod. In it thou shalt not do any work ; thou, nor 
thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy 
maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is 
within thy gates : For, in six days the Lord made 
heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and 
rested the seventh day : Wherefore the Lord blessed 
the Sabbath day and hallowed UP — Exod. xx. 

So, in the rehearsal of its import, in connection with 
their moral obligations and the threatened penalty, on 
the delivery of the tables of stone, after the ritual law, 
and the directions concerning the tabernacle and its 
services had been given : " The Lord spake unto 
Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of 
Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep, for 
it is a sign between me and you throughout your 
generations, that ye may know that I am the Lord 
that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the Sabbath 
therefore : for it is holy unto you. Every one that de- 
fileth it, shall surely be put to death : for whosoever 
doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from 



58 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

among his people. Six days may work be done, but 
in the seventh, is the Sabbath of rest holy to the 
Lord : whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath-day, 
he shall surely be put to death. Wherefore the children 
of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sab- 
bath, throughout their generations, for a perpetual 
covenant. It is a sign between me and the children 
of Israel forever : For in six days the Lord made 
heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested." 
— Exod. xxxi. 

The seventh day was thus consecrated and set apart 
as a sign, token, commemorative attestation of the 
fact that in six days the Lord created the heavens and 
the earth, the sea and all that in them is ; and that 
fact was so essential to the assertion and validity of 
his claims as Lawgiver and Ruler, that whosoever 
refused or omitted to acknowledge^ it, by refusing or 
omitting to observe the prescribed sign, was therefore 
to be put to death. 

From the nature of the sign — the consecration and 
observance of the seventh day — it is obvious that the 
reason why that was appointed instead of any other 
significant ordinance, was, as the text so emphatically 
declares, because the work of creation had been 
accomplished in six days. That sign in preference to 
any other could not have been prescribed, had the 



REASON AND OBJECT OF THE SABBATH. 59 

heavens and earth been created myriads of ages before 
the creation of man. 

To guard the Israelites against idolatry, and against 
infidelity and error as to their Creator and his preroga- 
tives, it was of the utmost importance to institute a 
memorial of his works as Creator, a remembrancer, a 
sign, distinct from their ordinary avocations, to recur 
and be recognized at frequent intervals, interwoven 
with their religious obligations and duties, and sanc- 
tioned by a penalty as severe as that denounced upon 
idolaters. 

The Sabbath was instituted in paradise, and no 
doubt was observed and regarded from that time for- 
ward as a sign, and testimony that in the six natural 
days which preceded its institution, the Lord created 
the heavens, the earth, the seas, and all that in them 
is, and rested on the consecrated seventh day. Hence 
when the manna was first dispensed in the wilder- 
ness, shortly after the passage of the Red Sea, and 
prior to the scenes at Sinai, we read Exod. xvi. 23, 
that on the sixth day the people gathered a double 
supply, and Moses said, " This is that which the Lord 
hath said, to-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath 
unto the Lord." He then directs them to use what 
was needful on the sixth day, and the remainder on the 
seventh, the Sabbath day, when there would be none 
in the field. " Six days shall ye gather it ; but on 



60 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

the seventh, which is the Sabbath clay, there shall be 
none." 

To maintain the conviction and public acknowledg- 
ment of the fact that in six days Grod created the 
heavens and earth, the sea, and all things therein, 
was to maintain the conviction and public acknow- 
ledgment that Jehovah the self-existent, the G-od of 
Israel, was the Creator ; and that he accomplished the 
work of creation, not at different, undefined, and 
unknown periods, but at one period, one epoch, a 
defined, appreciable, familiar space of six days. The 
idolatry (namely the worship of Bel, Baal, Beelzebub, 
Satan) which prevailed in Egypt and in Canaan when 
Moses wrote, denied these facts ; and regarded the 
world as eternal, or ascribed the works of creation as 
it did the works of providence, to the created intelli- 
gence denominated Bel, Baal, &c, and assigned to 
him the sun as his tabernacle and Shekina. The 
antagonism and rivalship of Satan required the 
homage of his followers ; to secure which, required on 
his part, the arrogation of those works, prerogatives, 
and rights, on which the claims of Jehovah as Creator 
and moral governor were founded. Hence to side 
with that arrogant and usurping adversary, disregard- 
ing the Divine testimony concerning the fact of the 
creation in six days, forgetting, despising, and violating 
the hallowed seventh day as the appointed sign and 



OPPOSITION TO IDOLATEY. 61 

memorial of that fact, and thereby denying that Jeho- 
vah was the Creator, and that, because he created all 
things, he was entitled to their universal homage and 
obedience, was treason against him, and deserved the 
penalty of death. 

In view of these considerations, the necessity, appro- 
priateness, grandeur, and beauty, of the first table of 
the Decalogue is apparent. There is a striking signifi- 
cance in the order and succession of commands. 
Thou shalt have no other gods before me ; in my sight, 
or in preference to me. Thou shalt not make, bow 
down to, or serve any graven image, or any likeness 
of anything in heaven or earth, any creature supposed 
to exist in the celestial orbs, or any creature on earth ; 
for I the Lord thy Grod am a jealous God. Thou 
shalt not take the name of the Lord thy Grod in vain. 
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy ! It is 
quite apparent from these inhibitions, that it was the 
impious rival system of idolatry that was to be resisted 
and avoided, as denying the Jehovah to be the Creator, 
and therefore the only lawgiver and ruler, and as 
ascribing his prerogatives to creatures. 

Idolatry then, and ever since, has not only denied 
the exclusive claims of Jehovah to homage and obe- 
dience, but has been no less conspicuously character- 
ized as substituting creature mediators and interces- 
sors, in place of the one Divine Mediator. It is a rival 



62 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

system ; a false religion in opposition to the true ; a 
system of creature worship in opposition to the worship 
of God the Creator. To prohibit and guard against 
it, therefore, was of the highest importance. It 
usurped the homage and allegiance which was due to 
God the Creator, and stood forth in public and arro- 
gant opposition to him, in its forms, examples, and 
pretensions ; and therefore he regarded it with jea- 
lousy and indignation, and declared himself in relation 
to it, " a jealous God, a consuming fire !" " They 
provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with 
abominations provoked they him to anger. They 
sacrificed unto devils, not to God ; to gods whom they 
knew not. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art 
unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. 
And when the Lord saw it he abhorred them ; and he 
said, I will hide my face from them. They have 
moved me to jealousy with that which is not God, 
they have provoked me to anger with their vanities." 
— -Deut. xxxii. 16—21. Again ; " If there should be 
among you man or woman, or family, or tribe, whose 
heart turneth away from the Lord our God, to go and 
serve the gods of these nations, the Lord will not spare 
him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy 
shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that 
are written in this book shall lie upon him." — Deut. 
xxix. 18-20. 



OPPOSITION TO IDOLATRY. 63 

To show the impotence and vanity of idols it is 
said : " The Lord is the true Grod ; He is the living 
Grod, and an everlasting king ; at his wrath the earth 
shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to 
abide his indignation. Thus shall ye say unto the 
gods which have not made the heavens and the earth, 
even they shall perish from the earth, and from under 
these heavens. He hath made the earth by his 
power ; He hath established the world by his wisdom, 
and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion. 
Every man is brutish in his knowledge ; every founder 
is confounded by the graven image ; for his molten 
image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them. 
They are vanity and the work of errors ; in the time 
of their visitation they shall perish. The portion of 
Jacob is not like them ; but he is the former of all 
things" — Jer. x. 10-16. 

The creation and proprietorship of the heavens and 
the earth are often ascribed to Jehovah as the ground 
of his claim to supreme homage and obedience, and his 
prohibition of idolatry. Thus Moses in his exhortation 
— Deut. x. and xi. " And now, Israel, what doth the 
Lord thy (xod require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy 
Grod, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to 
serve the Lord thy Grod with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord 
and his statutes, which I command thee this day for 



64 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

thy good. Behold the heaven, and the heaven of hea- 
vens is the Lord's thy G-od, the earth also, with all 
that therein is. Take heed to yourselves, that your 
heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve 
other gods, and worship them ; and then the Lord's 
wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the 
heavens that there be no rain, and that the land yield 
not her fruit, lest ye perish quickly," &o. 

" By the "Word of the Lord were the heavens made, 
and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. 
He gathereth the waters of the sea together as a heap : 
he layeth up the depth in storehouses. Let all the 
earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the 
world stand in awe of him. For he spake and it was 
done, he commanded and it stood fast."— Ps. xxxiii. 

" Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's 
hands ; they that make them are like unto them ; so 
is every one that trusteth in them. Israel, trust in 
the Lord. Ye are blessed of the Lord which made 
heaven and earth." — Psalm cv. 

When Sennacherib trusting in his idols invaded 
Judea and sent to reproach and defy the G-od of 
Israel, Hezekiah prayed, saying, " Lord of hosts, 
G-od of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, 
thou art the Grod, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms 
of the earth : thou, hast made heaven and earth." — 
Isa. xxxvii. 



VANITY OF IDOLS. 65 

" Grreat is the Lord, and greatly to be praised : he 
also is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods 
of the people are idols ; but the Lord made the hea- 
vens."—-! Chron. xvi. 

" Thus saith Grod the Lord, he that created the 
heavens and stretched them out, he that spreadeth 
forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it, I am 
the Lord, that is my name ; and my glory will I not 
give to another, neither my praise to graven images." 
— Isa. xlii. 

" They that make a graven image are all of them 
vanity," &c. — " Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, I 
am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth 
forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the 
earth by myself, that frustrateth the tokens of the 
liars, and maketh diviners mad." — Isa. xliv. 

" Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and 
his Maker, I have made the earth, and created man 
upon it ; I, even my hands have stretched out the 
heavens, and all their host have I commanded. — Thus 
saith the Lord that created the heavens, Grod himself 
that formed the earth and made it ; he hath estab- 
lished it ; he created it not in vain ; he formed it to 
be inhabited : I am the Lord, and there is none else. — 
They have no knowledge that set up the wood of their 
graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save." 
— Isa xlv. 



66 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

The foregoing conclusion respecting the creation of 
all things in six days, is confirmed by the narrative in 
the second chapter of Genesis ; wherein, as in various 
other Scriptures, the gloss, proposed by Dr. Smith and 
others, on the woi'&made, as though it meant arranged, 
disposed, or something short of creation, is refuted. 
For on the supposition that the earth was created at 
an earlier epoch, and that this word in the narrative 
of the six days refers only to the disposing, arranging, 
or fitting up of the chaotic materials of the pre-exist- 
ing earth, we must conclude that there was no proper 
creation of man, or of the animals and plants, said to 
have been made in the six days. 

" These are the generations [that is, the foregoing 
are the leading facts respecting the origin] of the 
heavens and of the earth, when they were created, in 
the day that the Lord Gfod made the earth and the 
heavens [here the words made and created evidently 
relate to the same acts] ; and made every plant of the 
field before it grew" [that is, he made the plants at the 
same time that he created the heavens and the earth, 
and made them before they grew for the reason which 
follows], " for the Lord Grod had not caused it to rain 
on the earth, and there was not a man to till the 
ground. And the Lord Grod formed man of the dust 
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life, and man became a living soul." — 



FURTHER REFERENCE TO THE SIX DATS. 67 

Gen. ii. Elsewhere in the historical, poetical, and 
prophetic books, the heavens and the earth are said to 
have been made. 

The geologists who profess to believe the Scriptures 
generally admit that there was a creation in the " six 
days ;" a creation of man, and of the plants and ani- 
mals known to subsequent history. But if the earth 
had been improved, during countless ages, by all the 
laws and agencies of nature, and was not in a state 
of chaos at the commencement of the six days, what 
does the narrative of the second and third days mean 
by the division of the waters, the separation of the seas 
from the dry land, &c. ? If, on the other hand, it was 
in such chaotic state, how came it so ? or had it dur- 
ing untold periods been stocked with plants and ani- 
mals, without light, without rain, and without even a 
separation of the land from the seas, and " the gather- 
ing together of the ocean waters into one place, so 
that the dry land might appear." — Gren. i. 9, 10, ana 
ii. 5. 

Without pursuing further the argument from the 
fact that the heavens and the earth, and all things, 
were created in six days, by noticing the very numer- 
ous instances in which to renew and reiterate the 
remembrance of it, and the conviction of the moral 
and- religious obligations and duties which resulted 
from that fact, the numbers six and seven respectively 



68 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

are affixed to the prescriptions respecting the taber- 
nacle and its furniture, and to those in relation to the 
ritual observances, privileges, offerings, feasts, and 
celebrations ; it is evident that the whole fabric of the 
Mosaic economy rests on the fact in question as its 
corner-stone. On that fact the claims of Jehovah as 
Creator, Lawgiver, and Ruler, depend. On the basis 
of that fact he claims the homage and obedience of 
men. And it is accordingly set forth most prominently 
at the commencement of the Scripture narrative, and 
reiterated as occasions arose for asserting the preroga- 
tives and rights of which it was the basis. 

The great controversy, of which hitherto this world 
has been the scene, which has furnished the materials 
of its history, and especially of that contained in the 
Old Testament, relates primarily and essentially only 
to the question, whether Jehovah the Creator, and as 
the Creator, or Baal the creature, was the true G-od, 
to whom the homage and obedience of all created 
moral agents was due. This controversy, from the 
apostasy to the present time, has been carried on by 
the great adversary, chiefly by means of idolatry, the 
organized, most manageable, and most effective system 
of antagonism and rivalship which was possible to 
fallen creatures. And accordingly, to rebuke and 
resist this system, the judgments inflicted upon rulers 
and people, from the Deluge to the Babylonish exile, 



RESISTANCE TO IDOLATRY. 69 

are, in most instances, expressly declared to have been 
designed to cause them to know that Jehovah was the 
living and true Grod, the Creator and Moral Governor 
of the world. 

Had the sacred writers only stated in general terms 
that Grod created the celestial bodies and the earth, 
without associating with that statement a detail of all 
the visible objects of creation, so as to exclude the idea 
of any other creator of any of those objects ; and 
including in their statement man, who was to be 
guarded against idolatry, imposture, and error, their 
testimony, however correct as far as it went, would 
not have met the exigencies of the case. 

Had the first verse of (xenesis asserted the creation 
at an indefinitely remote, uncertain, and unknown 
epoch, wholly unassociated with man as a creature, 
and with his relations and duties as a moral agent, no 
such sign as the sanctification of the seventh day, to 
re-express and perpetuate the fact that Jehovah was 
the Creator, could have been instituted ; nor would the 
bare assertion that he was the Creator, without such 
a significant and oft-recurring sign, founded in the de- 
tails of the works of creation, and interwoven with the 
moral relations and obligations of man, have served 
to guard him against the wiles of the antagonist 
system. 

To the same effect it may be observed, that most of 



70 THE EPOCH OP CREATION. 

the miraculous interpositions recorded in the Old 
Testament are declared to have been designed to 
produce a conviction that Jehovah was the only living 
and true Grod, the Creator and (xoverncr of the world, 
and that idols were vanity and imposture. Those 
interpositions were public and visible manifestations 
of Jehovah's supremacy and power over the objects of 
idolatrous homage, and over all creatures. The bare 
verbal assertion of such supremacy and power was 
insufficient. The object required acts and results 
which could be seen and felt, and the particulars of 
which could be propagated by report and recorded for 
perusal. 

The destruction of Sodom, the miracles of Egypt, of 
the Red Sea, of the wilderness, the passage of the 
Jordan, the conquest of Jericho, and many others 
might be referred to. But no one is more in point 
than that of the arrest of the sun and moon by the 
Divine power through the instrumentality of Joshua. 
Those luminaries were the objects of the idolatrous 
confidence and worship of the kings and people of 
Canaan, who with their idol system were to be 
rebuked, confounded, and destroyed. 

This signal exhibition of the power of the (rod of 
Israel over those celestial orbs and over the elements, 
occurred at a period of the war when it was most 
wanted to reassure and embolden the Israelites, and to 



TEIAL OP IDOLATEY AT GIEEON. 71 

dishearten and terrify the hosts of idolatry throughout 
the whole country. The army of Joshua had recently 
been repulsed and dismayed at Ai. The defection of 
the Gibeonites from their former allies and their league 
with the princes of Israel, had induced the neighbor- 
ing five kings of the Amorites and their armies to 
march upon Gibeon with a determination to destroy 
it. They were aware of the total destruction of 
Jericho and of Ai ; and when they heard that the 
Gibeonites had joined the invaders, " they feared 
greatly," and doubtless hoped by promptly destroying 
them to prevent further defection, and with their com- 
bined force to encounter and drive back the army of 
Israel. This, therefore, was to be a decisive battle. 
It was now to be seen whether those who trusted in 
idols or those who trusted in Jehovah, were to be 
triumphant. The great question at issue, the contro- 
versy between the God of Israel and Baal, the question 
which of them was superior to the other, and able to 
maintain his claims, was to be so tried as to foreshow 
and decide the issue of the whole campaign. To 
accomplish all this, and to strike all the other kings 
and armies of Canaan with terror and dismay, it was 
necessary not merely to exterminate the confederate 
Amorites, but signally and visibly to confound and 
triumph over their idols; as in the plagues of Egypt 
and the destruction of their first-born, it is said, 



72 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

" Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judg- 
ment, I am the Jehovah." 

Joshua, therefore, hastened to the scene of action. 
The Lord said unto him, Fear them not, for I have 
delivered them into thy hand. And the Lord discom- 
fited them before Israel, and showered a storm of hail- 
stones upon them ; and when the rout and the panic 
were at their height, at the uplifted voice of Joshua, 
he suspended the revolution of the earth so that the 
sun stood still, and the moon was stayed, until the 
people had avenged themselves upon their enemies — 
the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted 
not to go down about a whole day ; and there was no 
day like that, before it, or after it — for the Lord 
fought for Israel ! 

Thus this miracle, like all other extraordinary inter- 
positions, was wrought for adequate reasons ; reasons 
founded in the prerogatives and moral purposes of 
God, and relating directly to the moral interests and 
duties of man. It was of a nature to be notorious and 
irresistibly convincing to all the idolaters on the 
earth. It showed that Jehovah the Creator had abso- 
lute power over the sun, moon, and earth, and all 
creatures, and therefore that idols were vain and 
impious ; and it had such effect that Joshua met with 
but faint opposition in his subsequent triumphs ; an 
effect which could not have been produced either upon 



FURTHER REBUKE OF IDOLATRY. 73 

the Israelites or upon the idolaters by a mere verbal 
announcement that the God of Israel was able to do 
such wonders. 

A. miracle similar in its nature and object is 
recorded in the history of Hezekiah, king of Judah. 
According to the succession of events, as narrated in 
Isaiah, 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles ; Sennacherib king 
of Assyria, a zealous worshipper of Baal and his 
images, emboldened by the success of his grandfather 
and his father in subduing and carrying the ten 
tribes into captivity and capturing their idols ; and by 
his own and their success in vanquishing several 
neighboring kings and their idol gods, invaded Judah, 
and sent an insolent and blasphemous message to 
Hezekiah and his people defying and contemning the 
GJ-od of Israel, as of no more power to withstand him 
and his idol god, than the nations and idols which he 
had subdued and destroyed. Jehovah, the Grod of 
Israel, vindicated his supremacy, and confounded the 
Assyrians and their idols, by miraculously destroying 
185,000 of the invading army, and thereby freeing 
Jerusalem and Judea from their designs. 

Owing probably to his neglect publicly to acknow- 
ledge this signal deliverance, and to celebrate the 
power and glory of the Deliverer, and as a censure also 
of his league with the idolaters of Egypt to assist him 

against the Assyrians, Hezekiah was visited with a 
4 



74 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

mortal sickness. In answer to his earnest entreaties, 
his term of life was extended fifteen years ; and as a 
sign that he should be miraculously restored, and at 
the same time as an exhibition of Jehovah's power 
over the celestial objects of idolatrous homage in 
Egypt and the surrounding kingdoms, he caused the 
sun to recede ten degrees, a space probably of about 
three hours, on the dial of Ahaz. The report of this pro- 
digy was widely circulated. The princes of Babylon, 
the metropolis of Baal, sent ambassadors to Hezekiah 
" to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land." 
The whole fabric and hierarchy of idolatry were 
confounded by the annihilation of the Assyrian army, 
and the display of the supremacy and power of the 
Grod of Israel, over the celestial orbs. 

To the same purpose, in the controversy between 
Elijah and the prophets of Baal, answering by fire, 
was to determine whether Jehovah or Baal was the 
true Grod. Ahab and his party worshipped the solar 
fire, under the idea of an intelligence residing in the 
sun, as the supreme ruler. To that rival intelligence 
and adversary they prayed, and offered human sacri- 
fices ; and to represent him when the sun was out of 
sight they constructed idols, molten images, in imita- 
tion of those of Egypt and surrounding nations. 
Elijah accordingly says to the prophets of Baal, " Call 
ye on the name of your Elohim ; and I will call on the 



TRIAL OF IDOLATRY AT CARMEL. 75 

name of Jehovah ; and the Elohim that answereth by- 
fire, let him be Elohim." — "And they called on the 
name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, 
Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any 
that answered." — " And Elijah said, Jehovah, Elohim 
of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this 
day that thou art Elohim in Israel, and that I am thy 
servant, and that I have done all these things at thy 
word. Hear me, Jehovah, hear me, that this people 
may know that thou art the Jehovah Elohim. — Then 
the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the sacrifice, 
&c. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their 
faces : and they said, The Jehovah, he is the Elohim : 
the Jehovah, he is the Elohim." — 1 Kings xviii. 

The frequent manifestation of the presence and 
agency of Jehovah in fire as a visible shekina, or 
cloud-like envelope, gave occasion probably to the 
antagonist and rival system. Thus, in the cherubim 
stationed at the gate of Eden, and doubtless in many 
other instances prior to the Deluge. In the more 
ample narrative of events after the institution of idola- 
try by the descendants of Noah, we have frequent 
notices of such Divine manifestations ; as at the cove- 
nant with Abraham ; in the burning bush, on Mount 
Sinai, in the pillar of fire, at the dedication of the 
tabernacle and temple ; at the destruction of Nadab 
and Abihu ; at the sacrifices of Manoah and Gfideon ; 



76 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

and in the visions of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. 
This mode of manifestation was evidently familiar to 
the Israelites at every period of their history ; and its 
appropriateness as a test, when the devotees of Baal 
were to be confounded, is manifest. If, as required 
by the proposal of Elijah, Baal, the pretended fire-god, 
who arrogated to himself that element as his resi- 
dence, the vehicle of his agency, and token of his 
prerogatives and power, could not, when called on, 
answer, and vindicate himself by fire, all men would 
see that he was not Elohim, but an arrogant impostor. 
This high controversy which commenced with the 
apostacy, and is not yet terminated, was foreseen 
before the creation. The Creator himself was to be a 
party to it ; and he took care in recording the work of 
creation to specify the visible objects and creatures in 
their several kinds, which he made ; and to associate 
with the narrative of his acts as Creator, the exercise 
of his prerogatives and rights as Moral Governor, and 
to institute a memorial, a sign, a solemn weekly obser- 
vance, with which their highest religious duties, obli- 
gations, and hopes, were indissolubly connected, to 
perpetuate the conviction and the most distinct and 
public acknowledgment, that he alone was the Creator, 
and that he created all things in the space of six 
days. 



CHAPTER III. 

The references to the "Work of the Creation in the New, in Harmony 
with those of the Old Testament — Coincidence of the first verses of 
the Gospel of John with the first of Genesis — Incidental allusions to 
the Epoch of Creation — That Man and the Material Worlds were 
Created at the same Epoch, implied in all that Relates to the "Work of 
Redemption, and in all the Ascriptions of Praise to the Creator for the 
Perfection of his Works- 

The opening of John is, both in its terms and im- 
port, the counterpart of the first verse of Genesis, " In 
the beginning was the Word ; and the "Word was with 
God ; and the Word was God. The same was in the 
beginning with God. All things were made by him. 
— He was in the world, and the world was made by 
him. — And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among 
us." 

In these statements it was the object of the evan- 
gelist to ascribe the creation of all things to the Logos, 
the personal Word, and thereby to attest his Divinity. 
He very probably had it in view to refute the Gnostic 
heresy, which ascribed the work of creation not to the 



78 



THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 



Deity, but to a created intelligence, or partly to a good 
and partly to an evil angel. 

It is to be observed that he ascribes the work of 
creation not to the second Person in the Godhead, as 
such ; but to that Person in the delegated, official 
character, in which he became incarnate, and dwelt 
on earth. He therefore sustained that character in 
the beginning, at the production of the first-fruits of 
creative energy. In that character he was with Grod, 
and " had glory with him before the world was." To 
assert that the second Person, as such, in distinction 
from his delegated character, was in the beginning, 
was with Grod, and was Grod, would not have sub- 
served the writer's object, for those things could not 
be questioned by any who acknowledged the existence 
of that Person ; and it would be to apply to him a 
name or designation applicable to his official Person 
only. But to say that He who appeared incarnate, 
and was distinguished as the Word, was in the begin- 
ning, was with Grod, and was Grod, was in every 
respect appropriate, as an introduction to the ascription 
to him of the work of creation.. It was in that char- 
acter that he said of himself, il before Abraham was, 
I am." And in the Epistle to the Colossians it is said 
of him, that "he is before all things, and by him all 
things consist." 

From these considerations it is to be inferred that 



CREATION WOEK OF CHRIST. 79 

the creation of all things was a part of the work dele- 
gated to the Logos, the anointed official Person ; and 
was in order to the other works comprised in his under- 
taking ; in the progress of which he took man's nature 
into union with his Person. In that view of him and 
his work it is written, " Thou art worthy, Lord, to 
receive glory, honor, and power ; for thou hast created 
all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were 
created :" and "that God created all things by Jesus 
Christ, to the intent that now unto principalities and 
powers in heavenly places might be known by (means 
of the redemption of) the Church, the manifold wisdom 
of God, according to the eternal purpose, which he 
purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." And again : 
" For by him were all things created that are in hea- 
ven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible — all 
things were created by him and for him, and he is 
before all things." 

The meaning of the phrase in the beginning, as 
employed by the evangelist, is evidently the same as 
that in Genesis i. 1. It denotes not an epoch, or any- 
thing in relation to time ; but the initiatory event of a 
series, the first of a comprehensive plan of arrange- 
ments, agencies, and events. The statement that "in 
the beginning was the "Word," is equivalent to saying, 
that the appointment of the second Person to the office 
of mediator, or the delegation to him in his officially 



80 THE EPOCH OF CKEATION. 

subordinate Person and character of the work which 
he undertook, including the creation, was first in the 
series of measures and events which appertained to 
that work. He was, or existed in that official charac- 
ter, as the first result of his appointment. As the 
Anointed, the Christ, he was with God, before exer- 
cising his creative energy in the work of creation ; 
and in that character he created all things. Thou 
Lord in the beginning [at the commencement of thy 
work] hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the 
heavens are the work of thy hands. He was appointed 
heir of all things which were to be brought into exist- 
ence, and as such, he made the worlds and all things 
to be subservient to the great moral purposes which he 
was to accomplish. Having created the earth, instead 
of leaving: it through millions of asres without occu- 
pants having any relation to his moral government, 
he created man, and invested him with a subordinate 
dominion over the inferior creatures, to rule them for 
himself, "for whom are all things, and by whom are 
all things." 

In this view of his person and office, and the con- 
nection of his work of creating and upholding all 
things with his moral and providential government, 
and all his works as Prophet, Priest, and King, it 
would be more than irreverent to represent him as 
having created the earth myriads of ages before he 



CREATION IN ORDER TO PROVIDENCE. SI 

created man, whose nature, in order to the execution 
of the most important and glorious part of his whole 
undertaking, was to be and remain forever united to 
his Person. 

No deductions of geology, unsupported by and irre- 
concilable with the teachings of revelation concerning 
him, can justify us in disconnecting the first act in 
the execution of his delegated undertaking, from the 
series to which that, in its precedence and in all its 
relations, was essential. 

The Scripture account makes the creation the basis 
and commencement of that great scheme of providence 
and redemption about which the entire volume of 
revelation is occupied. Before the foundation of the 
world, in that covenant transaction in which originated 
the office, appointment, and delegated authority, and 
work, of him by whom all things were created, those 
whom he was to redeem " were chosen in him ; they 
were foreordained before the foundation of the world; 
from the beginning they were chosen to salvation ;" as 
if all the works of creation were but means pre- 
requisite and in order to their redemption. Accord- 
ingly he was recognized when incarnate as having 
sustained this delegated official character from the 
origin of the entire scheme of creation, providence, and 
grace. Hence the frequent references in his own dis- 
courses and elsewhere in the New Testament to the 



82 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

foundation or creation of the world as the commence- 
ment of his office and administration. He taught con- 
cerning himself and his kingdom things " which had 
been kept secret from the foundation of the world." 
" Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given 
me be with me where I am ; that they may behold my 
glory which thou hast given me ; for thou lovedst me 
before the foundation of the world." " Come ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the world." " For 
then (if Christ offered, himself periodically) must he 
often have suffered since the foundation of the world." 
" That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed 
from the foundation of the world, from the blood of 
Abel unto the blood of Zacharias — may be required of 
this generation." " Whose names were not written 
in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world." 
" Whose names are not written in the Book of Life of 
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." 
" Which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy 
prophets since the world began.— Spoken by the mouth 
of his holy prophets which have been since the world 
began." " Since the world began was it not heard 
that any man opened the eyes of one that was born 
blind." " According to the revelation of the mystery 
which was kept secret since the world began." " The 



NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 83 

hope of eternal life which G-od, that cannot lie, pro- 
mised before the world began." 

These quotations are somewhat multiplied, to show 
the current usage of Scripture in its varied and inci- 
dental references to the creation of the world as to an 
epoch, or stand-point, with which the commencement 
of the human race was coeval. No one can possibly 
brins: himself to believe that the sacred writers in 
these comparisons of things present, with things done, 
existing, or commencing at the creation of the world, 
meant to refer to a creation myriads of ages prior to 
the creation of man ; or that they did not mean to 
represent that the foundation, beginning, creation of 
the world, including man, took place at one and the 
same epoch — the epoch with which the first steps and 
pledges of the work of redemption were coincident, 
and to which, historically, the agency of man, the 
slaughter of Abel, and the mission of the earliest pro- 
phets were closely related. 

In the vision, Rev. iv., which John had of the Son 
of G-od, seated on a throne encircled by a rainbow, the 
token of his covenant relation towards his people, and 
with the accompaniment of other insignia of his 
mediatorial office, as in the similar visions of Isaiah, 
Ezekiel, and Daniel, he is worshipped and praised by 
the elders and representatives of all his holy creatures, 
for having created all things, and having created them 



84 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

for his pleasure, will, or purposes, i. e., to be the scene 
and the instruments of his providence and grace. His 
worthiness to receive such homage is expressly inferred 
from his having created all things. " Thou art worthy, 
Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou 
hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are 
and were created." 

Assuredly the creation here referred to cannot have 
been the fitting up of a pre-existing earth ; for the 
fitting up supposed by the geologists to have taken 
place in the " six days" was not a creation, but only a 
modification, by which the earth was rendered fit to 
be inhabited by man, after it had existed and been the 
abode of animals during immeasurable periods. Such 
modifications, even if man and certain animals were 
then first brought into existence, could not be called 
the creation of all things, and on that ground be made 
the basis of a claim to homage ; for in the all things 
here, as in every parallel passage, the heavens and 
earth, and all their hosts, are included. 

Nor can the creation referred to mean or include a 
creation of the earth, and certain animal and vege- 
table races, millions of millions of ages prior to the crea- 
tion of man. For if such creation be supposed, it could 
have no connection with the mediatorial work, as it 
would have comprised no intelligent creatures, no 
accountable moral agents; and it is not conceivable 



GEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS. 85 

that such agents, created myriads of ages afterwards, 
could have any connection with, or any relation to it. 
That supposed primeval earth, as the geologists teach 
us, was and continued to be in a state of chaos (with- 
out order, light, or life, according to Dr. Candlish), or 
was prior to the " six days" thrown into such a chaotic 
state as to exterminate all its races of plants and ani- 
mals, terrestrial and marine, and render it necessary 
to create new races to stock anew the waters as well 
as the dry land. Surely it is not conceivable that such 
a creation, so totally disconnected with man and with 
the mediatorial work, should be referred to as the 
ground of the ascription to the Mediator of glory, 
honor, and power, as being for his pleasure, and sub- 
servient to the moral, providential, and redemptive 
work, for which he is worshipped in the scene in ques- 
tion, as is evident from the insignia which distinguished 
his appearance. 

Again : the alleged primeval earth of the geologists 
is supposed by them to have been, if not a mere chaos, 
wholly without order, light, and life, yet, at best, to 
have been an extremely, nay, inconceivably, imperfect 
earth — an earth in such a state and condition as with 
no propriety to be called an earth, it being at first, and 
no one knows for how many myriads of ages, unfit for 
the abode of the meanest insects and reptiles, and so 
unfit for the abode of man, its intended prince and 



86 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

master, as to require a course of alterations and im- 
provements to be carried on incessantly through immea- 
surable rounds of duration, before he could exist, if 
created or developed and brought upon the stage. 
After it had so far been improved by geological causes 
as to admit of the creation of some of the lowest 
organisms, the Creator interposed and brought them 
into existence ; and when, according to the laws of 
their nature, which (contrary to the perfective law of 
the embryo earth) was a law of decay and degrada- 
tion, they " died out," and took their permanent 
stations as organic fossils in the lowest fossilliferous 
stratum, the Creator interposed again, and brought 
forward a class of creeping things, as much more perfect 
than the class which had died out, as the progress of 
geological improvement would permit. By the repetition 
of this mechanical tide-waiting process, as often as 
the successive creations, when their places of abode 
became too perfect for their natures, declined and run 
out, the earth at last came to be stocked with animals 
wholly unsuited to be contemporary with man. The 
development had gone too far, — a retrograde movement 
was necessary. It was not only necessary to extermi- 
nate all the animals and vegetables, terrestrial and 
marine, of the latest creation, but to throw the earth 
itself back into a chaotic state, in order, by the opera- 
tion of the " six days" spoken of by Moses, to give it 



GEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS AS TO MAN. 87 

just that degree of perfection which would make it 
suitable to the nature of man, and to stock the seas, 
the land, and the atmosphere, with races proper to be 
contemporary with him. 

Wonderful scheme of operations, no doubt, consi- 
dered as a geological contrivance, and as a total 
failure up to the epoch of the " six days." But what 
is to be thought of it, considered as the scheme of the 
Moral Governor of the Universe, who sees the end from 
the beginning, and acts only for reasons worthy of his 
infinite perfections ? 

Was it his object, during the untold geological 
cycles, to bring the incipient elementary earth, by the 
operation of geological causes, to such a state of per- 
fection, that he might safely bring the creature^ man, 
forward, under circumstances compatible with his 
existence ? Man, the creature, on whose account 
alone, in distinction from all other creatures, the 
whole process, from the outset, was undertaken, and 
in comparison with whom, all other creatures were 
mere foils, dumb shadows, mute emblems, significant 
only as such, and as petrified monitors in the deep 
charnel-house of the earth. Man, who was to have 
dominion over all other creatures on the earth, " the 
beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of 
the seas," to be brought into existence and into the 
scene of his imperial birthright, after innumerable 



88 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

creations and extinctions of distinct and entire races 
of his destined subjects ? Man, whose terrestrial 
supremacy and rule, was but the emblem and reflec- 
tion of the supremacy and rule over him of his Creator 
and Moral Governor ? Man, who as head of the lower 
creation, was a type of the Grod-man as head over all 
things visible and invisible ; to be brought into exist- 
ence and into his relation of headship at the very 
close of a long series of distinct and widely separated 
creations, whose death, burial, and utter extinction, 
had rendered them incapable of a head ! 

This beggarly, earth-born scheme, is scarcely to be 
treated of without impatience and indignation. It 
dishonors every attribute of the eternal self-existent 
Creator ; and would dishonor any human mechanician, 
who was competent to his undertaking. To suppose 
such an originally imperfect creation, is at war with 
all analogy in the works of the all-perfect Creator as 
represented in the Scriptures, and with his own 
emphatic attestations. It indicates nothing of wisdom 
or forecast ; nothing of subserviency to a moral 
system, of the progress and consummation of which 
it was to be the scene. Asa theory of creation, it 
makes man of no more significance than a reptile, dis- 
tinguishing him from the inferior animals only as they 
are distinguished from one another by respectively 



GEOLOGY DEROGATORY TO THE CREATOR. 89 

requiring for their residence a more perfect habitation 
than their predecessors. 

It is derogatory to the Creator, and a denial of his 
perfection, to ascribe to him the creation of anything 
not perfect in its kind, and not perfectly adapted to 
the present and prospective ends and uses for which it 
was designed. It is because all his works are perfect, 
and by their perfection brightly reflect and clearly 
attest his perfection and declare his glory, that he is 
praised and honored for them by all holy intelligences, 
in heaven and on earth. 

Accordingly in the inspired narrative of the creation, 
we have the Divine attestation repeatedly expressed, 
that the things created then, as they came from the 
hand of the Creator, were good ; perfect in their kind, 
their nature, their adaptations and relations, the product 
and type of the perfection which designed and gave 
them being. The light was good. The seas and the 
dry land were good. The plants and trees were good. 
The sun, moon, and stars, were good. The terrestrial 
animals, and the fish of the sea, were good. Man and 
all the animal and vegetable races, were, each accord- 
ing to its nature, perfect. " And G-od saw everything 
that he had made, and behold it was very good." 
They neither needed nor were capable of any improve* 
ment by time or by physical changes. Being the 
product and expression of the Creator's infinite perfec- 



90 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

tion, they were rightfully, on that account, to be the 
occasion of ceaseless praise from all creatures. And 
hence the angels and hosts of heaven, the sun, moon 
and stars, man, and all creatures on the earth, are 
again and again called on " to praise the name of the 
Lord," for the display of his perfections in their crea- 
tion ; " for he commanded, and they were created ; He 
hath also established them for ever and ever ; he hath 
made a decree which shall not pass — Let them praise 
the name of the Lord ; for his name alone is excellent ; 
His glory is above the earth and heavens." — Psalm 
cxlviii. " Lord, how manifold are thy works ! in 
wisdom hast thou made them all ; the earth is fall of 
thy riches ; so is this great and wide sea." — Ps. civ. 
" The heavens declare the glory of Grod [the sum of 
his revealed perfections], the firmament showeth the 
work of his hands." — Ps. xix. " Rejoice in the Lord, 
ye righteous, for praise is comely for the upright. 
He loveth righteousness and judgment ; the earth is 
full of the goodness of the Lord. By the word of the 
Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them 
by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters 
of the sea together as a heap ; he layeth up the depth 
in store houses. Let all the earth fear the Lord ; let 
all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. 
For he spake and it was done, he commanded, and it 
stood fast."— -Ps. xxxiii. "• Blessed be thy glorious 



SCEIPTTJEE TESTIMONIES. 91 

name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. 
Thou, even thou, art Lord alone. Thou hast made 
heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the 
earth and all things that are therein, the sea and all 
that is therein, and thou preservest them all ; and the 
host of heaven worshippeth Thee." — Nehemiah ix. 
" Thus saith the Lord — I have made the earth and 
created man upon it ; I, even my hands have stretch- 
ed out the heavens ; and all their host have I com- 
manded. Thus saith the Lord that Created the 
heavens ; Grod himself that formed the earth, and 
made it ; He hath established it ; He created it not 
in vain ; He formed it to be inhabited ; I am the 
Lord, and there is none else. I have not spoken in 
secret." — Isaiah xlv. 

In many of the Scriptures hitherto quoted, the crea- 
tion of man is spoken of directly or by implication, in 
such connection with the creation of the heavens and 
earth as plainly to convey the idea that they were 
created in connection with each other at one epoch. 
The same idea is impressively conveyed in numerous 
other passages. As an example of these, at the close 
of the narration of the six days' operations it is said : 
" Thus the heavens and the earth were finished^ and 
all the host of them." As much as to say, "The 
foregoing is an account of the commencement, pro- 
gress, and completion, of the creation of the heavens, 



92 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

the earth, and all creatures, of course including man. 
For if the heavens and earth were not created within 
the six days, no satisfactory meaning is to be deduced 
from this passage considered as connected with, and as 
the conclusion of, the foregoing narrative. If it is 
supposed that the heavens as well as the earth were 
created at an indefinitely remote period prior to the six 
days, and that the above passage asserts that they 
were finished in the same sense as the geologists sup- 
pose the earth to have been finished and fitted up, 
then it must be inferred that the celestial orbs were at 
their creation imperfect like the earth, and equally 
needed, after an interval of incalculable duration, to be 
finished and fitted for the reception of their inhabit- 
ants. For it is made certain by this passage, that the 
finishing' of the heavens and earth, and all the host of 
them, took place in the six days. 

Again, in Gren. i. 16-19, it is said that, God made 
two great lights ; the sun and moon, and the stars also ; 
and set them in the firmament of the heaven. If 
this does not mean that he had made them at that 
epoch, and on the fourth day assigned to them their 
office of reflecting the light created on the first day, 
then the finishing of them asserted at the close of the 
narrative, must have included something similar to 
what the geologists mean by fitting up the earth, and 
they must, therefore, have been previously in a state 



SCRIPTUKE TESTIMONY. 93 

of chaotic ruin, " without order, life, or light." And 
if they were without light, so must the earth have 
been, and consequently without life also ; for the 
origin and production of light is expressly assigned to 
the first of the six days. Is there, then, any manifes- 
tation of the wisdom and goodness, or of any of the 
purposes or perfections of the Creator, in such a crea- 
tion of the heavens and earth countless ages before 
they were finished, and rendered habitable — any such 
manifestation that angels and men should be specially 
called on to praise him for it ; or such as to be with 
propriety alleged as the ground of his prerogatives and 
government over them ? Had they, or have they, any real 
or conceivable relation to the supposed creation or its 
epoch ? "Was there any such connection between the 
dark and chaotic state of the earth during the sup- 
posed incalculable period, and that finishing of it, 
which rendered it habitable, as to extend man's 
responsibility back to the earlier epoch, and require 
him to include it in his songs and doxologies of praise ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

Notice of some ei the Physical Difficulties of the Geologic Theory — 
The prohable quantity of matter in the Sedimentary Formations 
computed in cubic miles ; compared with the quantity of unstratified 
rock existing above the sea level, and with the area of the existing 
oceans — The production of both Marine and Terrestrial Plants and 
Animals, and the Diffusion and Fossilization of them in the Sedimen- 
tary Strata, according to the Geologic theory, incredible and impos- 
sible. 

Here those who believe in the inspiration of the 
Scriptures might be content to rest, assured that no 
interpretation of the facts of geology or inferences from 
them, in conflict with the statements of revelation, can 
be entitled to any consideration. But many good men, 
teachers of revealed religion, and others, are prepos- 
sessed with the impression that the geological theory, 
respecting the antiquity of the earth, is entitled to 
regard as a deduction or demonstration of science, and 
as such is in conflict with the language of Scripture. 
This, however, is a mistake. That which constitutes 
or belongs to geology as a science, has properly nothing 



LIMITED PE0VINCE OF SCIENCE. 95 

whatever, directly or indirectly, to do with the question 
at issue. It has to do only with physical phenomena, 
their natural laws, and their physical relations and 
connections. To determine the Epoch of Creation is 
as truly out of its province as it is to create a world. 
It cannot demonstrate, nor even render it probable, 
that the earth ever was created. The theory of its 
remote antiquity is no part of the science, but is a dis- 
creditable appendage to it. The theory is merely an 
inference, a supposition, a conjecture, derived from the 
construction which the geologist puts upon the facts of 
the science, the phenomena which he observes, and 
the mode in which he conceives them to have been 
produced by the ordinary and exclusive operation of 
natural causes. Should he modify his inference by 
admitting that a supernatural cause may have been 
interposed to produce those facts, he would be forced 
to conclude that geology could determine nothing upon 
the subject. It is impossible for him to prove, or to 
exhibit any facts or phenomena from which it can be 
inferred that supernatural interpositions have not 
taken place, or that there have not been adequate 
reasons and occasions for them. And it is only by 
vaulting over the boundaries of Greological Science, 
into the province of revelation, moral government, and 
final causes, and assuming that no supernatural inter- 
positions have occurred, that he makes his inference, 



96 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

and concludes that the earth must have existed long 
enough for natural causes to produce the phenomena 
which he observes. 

It may be worth the while, therefore, to exhibit 
some of the difficulties which attend the supposition 
that the phenomena of geology were produced ex- 
clusively by the gradual operation of natural causes. 
In doing this it may perhaps appear that more mira- 
cles are required on that supposition than are indicated 
in the Scriptures, in connection with the physical and 
moral systems together. 

It is not intended to advance any theory as to the 
mode of operation by which it pleased the Creator and 
Ruler of the world to produce the changes which have 
taken place in and beneath the surface of the earth ; 
but only to show that the mode specified by the 
geologists is untenable, and to indicate that instead of 
physical there were moral reasons sufficient to justify 
the belief that they were produced by supernatural 
interpositions, as there undeniably have been such 
reasons for such interpositions in numerous instances, 
since the period of those changes by which the sedi- 
mentary deposits with their fossil remains were 
formed. This is all that the case requires. If the 
mode of operation is not revealed in the Scriptures, 
geology cannot determine it ; and in relation either to 
our faith or practice, it is no more essential to us to 



MORAL REASONS OF PHYSICAL CHANGES. 97 

know it, than it is essential to us to know the mode in 
which the Divine power will cause a resurrection of 
the dead, or to know the mode in which any physical 
effect is produced by a Divine Volition. It may well 
suffice us to know that the Scriptures set forth moral 
reasom for the great facts of sacred history, and declare 
that those facts were caused by the Moral Governor 
of the world ; as in the case of the creation itself, the 
deluge, the confusion of tongues, the destruction of 
Sodom, the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, their 
deliverance, and the overthrow of the Egyptians in the 
passage of the Red sea, their sustentation forty }'ears 
in the wilderness, &c, &c. Upon these and the like 
remarkable facts involving, beyond a question, super- 
natural interpositions, all the details of the Old Testa- 
ment history absolutely depend. If they did not 
occur, the whole history must be a fable. If they did 
occur, then miracles were wrought, and wrought for 
the reasons assigned for their occurrence, whether the 
mode in which the Divine power was exercised in 
working them is revealed or not, and whether that 
mode was or was not in harmony with or in opposition 
to the ordinary laws of nature. And to believe in the 
Scriptures is to believe in those facts, and in the 
reasons assigned for them, and the power which caused 
them, as much as it is to believe in the doctrines 
which those facts attest concerning the Deity, the 



98 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

prerogatives, the moral government, the providence, 
the holiness, justice, and goodness, of their author. 
The facts occurred and were recorded purposely to 
attest the doctrines ; they occurred under circum- 
stances, and in such immediate connection with the 
reasons assigned for them, and with the doctrines they 
were designed to enforce, as to have the effect of the 
most signal attestations ; and as such, the knowledge 
of many of them was extended over the earth, and has 
been perpetuated in the memories, the monuments, the 
languages, and the annals of the nations. 

To deny, explain away, or divest these facts of their 
supernatural character, is to deny that the doctrines 
were attested by them, and to that extent, at least, to 
deny the doctrines themselves, and the inspiration of 
the record of them. Their importance and their credi- 
bility both depend wholly on their being supernatural 
— the immediate effect of the power of Grod, exerted 
for special and declared purposes. If they were not 
supernatural then they did not prove or attest any 
Divine truth or doctrine ; and can be regarded only as 
stupendous fictions or childish hyperboles. 

With these considerations in view, the reader will 
be prepared to appreciate the physical difficulties 
which attend the geological theory of creation. 
Before specifying these, however, it must be observed, 
that the geologists suppose the earth in its earliest and 



GEOLOGIC THEORIES OF CHANGES, 99 

most imperfect state, to have exhibited on its surface 
no other substance but unstratified rock, which, unless 
it was originally in a state of igneous fluidity, and 
became solid by being cooled, is deemed to have 
undergone no change. 

The surface of this primitive rock is supposed to 
have presented great inequalities of altitude and 
depression ; the elevated portions affording materials, 
and the valleys space, for the sedimentary deposits in 
which the fossil remains of plants and animals are 
now discovered. The higher portions of the primitive 
rock, being exposed to the influence of the atmosphere 
and of water, are supposed to have been gradually 
worn away by the operation of these elements, and the 
abraded particles to have been washed down to the 
lower levels of the primitive surface, and thus gradu- 
ally to have formed a stratum or layer of sediment. 
In process of time the first or lower stratum was 
covered by a second, consisting of materials geologi- 
cally different from the first, as limestone differs from 
slate or sandstone ; and that in turn was covered by a 
third, differing in like manner from the second ; and 
so on through incalculable periods of duration, till the 
succession of layers, of which there are about thirty, 
attained a height of ten miles or more, from the foun- 
dation. 

This process, no doubt, would require a lapse of 



100 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

inconceivable rounds of time, or rather of infinite dura- 
tion, on the supposition that the disintegrating agents, 
air and water, acted with no more force on the solid 
granite, than they have been observed to act during 
the period of secular history, or for the last 3000 
years. But they are not and cannot consistently be, 
by the geologists, supposed ever to have acted with 
any more force or rapidity than at present. To sup- 
pose that they had, would be to depart from the rule 
of scientific induction, and introduce a higher and more 
powerful cause than was within their observation. 
The law of those agents in respect to the energy of 
their operation in wearing away primitive rocks, is 
deduced from the rate at which they are now observed 
to produce effects of that kind ; and there is nothing 
in their nature to require, suggest, or admit the infer- 
ence, that they were ever more powerful or effective 
than at present, any more than there is in the nature 
of gravitation anything to justify the conclusion that 
it once had more potency and effect than now. On the 
contrary, the wearing down of the rock and formation 
of the sedimentary deposits are supposed to have been 
accomplished by a process as slow as that by which 
the like operation is now going on. Even with respect 
to volcanic action, geological writers of the greatest 
authority allege that there is no ground to conclude 
that volcanoes were ever more frequent or more power- 



MIRACULOUS AGENCY EXCLUDED. 101 

ful than at present ; and with respect to deluges, that 
while from their occurrence within the period of his- 
tory we may infer that earlier ones occurred, we have 
no right to infer that the earlier ones were of any 
greater extent than the recent, of which history in- 
forms us. 

Besides, if it be supposed that those causes ever 
operated more rapidly than at present, who can tell 
how much more rapidly ? Was it a thousand times, 
or a million ? or myriads of millions ? Greology can- 
not tell ; and therefore cannot decide that the effects 
were not produced in a brief, or comparatively brief 
period ; in the 1600 years which preceded the deluge ; 
in the year of the deluge ; or in the next succeeding 
1500 years which elapsed before the period of history 
commenced ? 

To suppose a more rapid operation of those causes 
ages ago, than at present, is to substitute conjecture 
in place of the rule of scientific induction from known 
facts ; and if the geologist infers from the almost 
imperceptible action of those causes now that the 
effects which he considers them adapted and designed 
to operate, were never more rapidly produced than at 
present, he in so doing gratuitously assumes that no 
supernatural cause was ever interposed to hasten 
them. But such an assumption is not Science. It is 
mere conjecture. Greology affords no means of proving 



102 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

or rendering it probable that supernatural interposi- 
tions have not taken place. The utmost it can do in 
this relation is to show that the operation of natural 
causes is all but imperceptibly slow ; so slow, indeed, 
as to render tne inference that the vast masses of 
sedimentary matter were ever produced by them, not 
merely improbable and incredible, but impossible. 

The question has no reference to the movement by 
ocean and river currents of the previously pulverized 
sediment with which they come in contact, but only 
to the operation by which the quantity of sediment is 
increased as well as moved ; the operation by which 
the materials of all sediment are detached and floated 
away from the primitive rocks. This is all that the 
question does or can include. For the mere movement 
of soils from one locality to another does not augment 
the total quantity of sedimentary matter ; and accord- 
ing to the theory there was primitive rock but no soil 
or other sedimentary matter when the process com- 
menced. And this must have been the case if the 
theory in respect to fossil remains is true ; for they are 
found very far down in the sedimentary strata, where 
according to the theory they must have been buried up 
by the materials which were gradually detached and 
washed down from the primitive rocks. 

Now in order to judge whether it is in itself credible 
or possible, or whether without a miraculous influence 



QUANTITY OF SEDIMENTARY MATTER. 103 

upon our minds, or a hallucination equal to that which 
would be required to make us believe the doctrine of 
the Metempsychosis, we can be brought to any degree 
of conviction, that all the sedimentary matter of the 
globe has been detached from primitive rocks, by the 
indescribably slow operation of natural causes, disposed 
in the layers, and pervaded by the fossil remains now 
found in it ; let it be observed, that the area occupied 
by the sedimentary formations is of vast extent. The 
superficial area of the globe is equal to about 148 mil- 
lions of square miles ; that of the dry land, or portions 
above the sea level, to 40 millions. Of this probably 
not less than four fifths, or 32 millions of square 
miles, are of sedimentary formation ; and if that forma- 
tion, as geologists of authority estimate, extends to the 
depth of ten miles,' or more, the aggregate would be 
equal to 320 millions of cubic miles. 

On the other hand the superficial area now occupied 
by primitive rock, supposed not to exceed eight mil- 
lions of square miles (and more probably far less than 
that), cannot, it is presumed, be estimated to be on an 
average more than one mile in height above the gene- 
ral level of the adjacent sedimentary surface. For 
although the loftiest summits of several mountain 
ranges rise more than one mile and some as high as 
five miles, above the level of the sea, the far greatest 
portion of the granitic surfaces are much less than half 



104 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

a mile in height. Supposing the general average to be 
one mile in height, the result would be eight millions 
of cubic miles of granite above the level of the sedi- 
mentary deposits ; and the quantity of material would 
be equal to one-fortieth part of the quantity contained 
in those deposits. 

Now it is to be observed that the thirty -two millions 
of square miles now occupied by the sedimentary 
masses, could not, at the commencement of their 
formation, nor at any period since, have furnished any 
of the sediment deposited there. For when the lower 
portion of the first layer of sediment was deposited, 
the same primitive rock which it now lies on must have 
been under it. And even if the now underlying rock 
yielded at first a portion of abraded particles, it would, 
after being covered with such particles to the depth of 
a few inches, be beyond the reach of the action of the 
agents of abrasion, and could yield no more. If then 
the 320 millions of cubic miles of sediment were pro- 
duced by the wearing down of primitive rocks, either 
by the action of air and water, or by any other cause, 
those rocks, it is manifest, must have existed, not 
within, but out of and beyond the limits of the area 
over which the sediment was floated, and where it 
now remains. Those primitive rocks, if they existed 
anywhere, must have existed on the top of the granitic 
rocks which now rise above the general level of the 



QUANTITY OF SEDIMENTARY MATTEE. 105 

sedimentary surfaces. They must have been piled up 
on the area of eight millions of square miles, assigned 
above to the existing granite surface ; and must have 
exhibited an average height of forty miles ; or if the 
most elevated summits were as much higher than the 
general average as the highest summits now are, 
there must have been granite mountains 200 miles in 
height, an altitude at which probably neither air nor 
water would ever wear them down. 

It is not perceived how these conclusions can be 
avoided. They are not to be relieved by supposing 
that a process of abrasion went on for a long time over 
the whole area of forty millions of square miles, till a 
vast mass of sedimentary matter was produced from 
rocks within the area of thirty-two millions, before it 
was washed down to its destined bed. For if not 
washed down as fast as produced, it would stop the 
process of abrasion as effectually on the surface of the 
rock from which it was disen^a^ed, as on the same at 
a lower level to which it might be floated down. 
And if floated down to lower levels as fast as it was 
disengaged, two difficulties would present themselves 
— 1. The quantity of such rock rising above the 
lowest level would be exhausted or covered up long 
before the deposits would rise to a height of ten miles, 
so that there would be a vast deficiency of materials, 

or we must suppose such rocks to have had an eleva- 

5* 



106 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

tion far greater than any of the existing primitive 
rocks, and to have occupied the whole or so much of 
the area as to preclude such extended and continuous 
sedimentary formations as now exist. 

2. A difficulty would present itself in respect to a 
supply of the plants and animals terrestrial and 
marine, the fossilized remains of which are discovered 
in the lower sedimentary strata, as well as in those 
above. Fo* where during the ages of such a process 
could plants and animals of both or indeed of either 
of those classes exist, so as to be supplied at the 
places of inhumation ? Both the theory under consi- 
deration, and the facts of geology imply that the sedi- 
mentary deposits, by whatever causes effected, were 
in progress simultaneously, wherever they now exist, 
and that the presence of water was an indispensable 
condition of their progress. There must have been 
water to convey the sedimentary matter down from 
higher levels, and when floated down, it was evidently 
precipitated to its bed, in water. This would neces- 
sarily preclude the contemporaneous existence of ter- 
restrial plants and animals ; and if there was water 
enough to supply aquatic plants and animals, how 
could it at the same time supply both those of salt and 
those of fresh water ? 

The sedimentary formations are described by the 
geologists as consisting of not less than thirty, " well 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE GEOLOGIC THEOET. 107 

defined beds, layers, or strata, of different mineral 
masses, masses differing in mineral composition, lying 
upon each other," originally like the leaves of a book, 
or a pile of wafers in a horizontal position, and subse- 
quently raised and tilted wherever their position has 
been altered, by a force from beneath. " They are 
placed one over the other, in a sure and known order 
of succession." Though in every locality some one or 
more out of the whole number of layers may be want- 
ing, " the order of position is never violated." — Dr. 
Pye Smith and others. These well established facts 
are, in relation to the geological theory of formation, 
of great significance. The theory assumes that there 
were above the lower level of the first horizontal layer, 
primitive rocks enough to supply the entire mass of 
sedimentary matter, and of course if the first layer was 
universally horizontal in its position, that entire mass 
must have existed elsewhere than over the area of the 
first sedimentary deposit. That first layer being 
everywhere the same, and diverse in mineral compo- 
sition from the layer above it, must be supposed to 
have been in progress of formation universally at the 
same time. For if it was not, then, since the surface 
of the rock from which all the sedimentary matter 
was to be derived, was, wherever it existed, univer- 
sally exposed to the agents of disintegration, the opera- 
tion of those agents must, in relation to some localities, 



108 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

Lave been miraculously suspended, while it went on 
wherever the first layer was in progress. For these 
physical agents or causes could not suspend them- 
selves, nor choose where to operate. It is their nature, 
their inherent and invariable law, to operate whenever 
and wherever they come in contact with the physical 
subject upon which it is their nature to have any 
influence. And if those primitive rocks existed, their 
entire surface must have been exposed to those agents, 
for by the theory no portion of the globe originally 
exhibited any other solid surface but primitive rock, 
and the operation of those agents on that surface must 
have been everywhere the same ; it could not be 
wholly or partially suspended without a miracle. 

Now if all the solid part of the globe which is not 
occupied by the sedimentary deposits was granite, and 
was worn down to supply the materials of those 
deposits ; if the wearing down and deposition were 
universally in progress at the same time, if the mate- 
rials detached from the rock were floated to the scene 
of their final destination, and there suspended in water, 
diffused over the whole area, and quickly precipitated 
to the bottom, so as to form in course of time the first 
layer, and subsequently the other layers in their due 
order and succession, then, beyond all question, there 
was during that process no place on the earth for the 
production of plants and animals to be buried up. To 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE GEOLOGIC THEORY. 109 

suppose that there was, is to assume that the physical 
causes of disintegration were not universally in opera- 
tion, but were suspended, which required a miracle. 
If they were not suspended, if they continued to work 
their effects upon the rock, what became of the 
detritus ? Was the washing down suspended also, 
by another miracle ? If so, and the materials, after 
being disengaged by air and water, or by air alone, 
were left on the rock and there accumulated till a soil 
was formed for the growth and support of plants and 
animals to be subsequently transported to another 
scene and buried up, that course of things would defeat, 
itself; for a slight accumulation of sedimentary matter 
on the elevated rock, as well as on that beneath the 
sedimentary beds, would prevent the abrading agents 
from coming in contact with the rock to be worn 
down, and wholly stop the supply of materials for 
covering up the plants and animals, or for going on 
with the sedimentary formation without them. 

There is no alternative to this course, but that of 
allowing more time and introducing more miracles. 
For if the washing down of sedimentary matter was 
suspended till a soil was formed for plants and animals, 
a miracle must occur to bring them into existence at 
the proper time ; when they were to be buried up, a 
miracle or something like it must occur to renew the 
floating down of the soil, lay the primitive rock bare 



110 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

again, and transport the plants and animals to the 
place of burial. And when this was accomplished, 
the washing down must be again suspended, and a 
new soil being formed, a new creation of plants and 
animals must take place. In this way only can the 
theory be sustained, and accordingly the geologists tell 
us of new creations and centres of creation as often as 
the exigencies of their theory require them. 

Nor can this theory be relieved of its impossible con- 
ditions or its dependence on miracles by the supposi- 
tion that the sedimentary masses were formed on the 
bed of the seas, and subsequently elevated above their 
surface. It would be equally true upon that as upon 
the former suppositions, that the primitive rock which 
was to furnish the whole quantity of sedimentary 
matter, must have existed elsewhere than within the 
area occupied by it after the process of deposition in 
strata or layers ; and wherever those rocks existed 
above the sea level, the process of wearing them down 
and floating the detached sediment to the sea, would 
equally preclude the growth of plants and animals to 
be inhumed. 

Moreover, if the seas were deep enough to admit of 
their receiving sediment to the height of ten miles, 
the intrusion of such a mass would necessarily dis- 
place an equal bulk of water, and thereby raise the 
general surface, or overflow all but the most elevated 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE GEOLOGIC THEORY. Ill 

portions of the earth's surface not previously sub- 
merged. But waiving all this, is it not inconceivable 
and impossible without a miracle, that the sediment 
detached from primitive rocks and washed down by 
river currents, should by the force of those currents or 
by any other means, be diffused and precipitated 
equally over the areas covered by the seas ? Are 
there currents in the seas extending in all directions 
from the mouths of rivers ? Currents of such extent 
and force, and in such variety as to transport materials 
coarse and fine, ponderous and light, thousands of 
miles, and distribute in different localities such only 
as were homogeneous,, and to transport and diffuse also 
the plants and animals whose fossilized remains are 
now discovered ? Surely the miracles of Scripture are 
nothing, compared to those which are necessary to this 
hypothesis. For supposing that the slow operation of 
natural causes might, during the lapse of an infinite 
succession of ages, wear down a quantity of primitive 
rocks equal in bulk to the sedimentary formations, it 
is demonstrable that there was not on the globe room 
for that quantity of rocks to exist, out of the space 
occupied by those formations, and the space occupied 
by the waters of the ocean ; and it is equally plain 
that if such a process was carried on according to the 
uniform law of those causes, and by means of water as 
the principal of them, the growth of plants and animals 



112 thk epoch of obeatton. 

must have boon preoluded till those formations were 
completed 3 so That" their remains oould nor possibly be 
distributed and fossilized in the respective strata. 
Whether the Theory of the geologists, as speoified 

above, is in all its particulars held and agreed to by 

all of them, or nor. is in no degree important. For 
while they may differ among themselves in regard to 
the nebular hypothesis, which by some is deemed to 
have been exploded by the telescopes oi Lord Rosse, 
but which, being mere conjecture, and never having 
had a particle o( evidence, science, or scientific induc- 
tion to support it. needed no explosion : and while 
they may di tier as to the equally gratuitous hypothesis 
of the earth having been originally in a melted state, a 
state of " igneous fluidity :" or as to the question 
whether or not the fossil remains in the lowest fossil- 
iferous stratum are those only of the most imperfect 
specimens of organic developments, and those of the 
next and of the superior strata in their order, of more 
perfect specimens : or whether they agree or differ as 
to any other details of their unsoriptural and incredible 
system : they one and all agree in those assumptions, 
inferences, and dogmas, upon which their system, as 
such, must stand or fall. They one and all agree in 
supposing that the sedimentary masses were formed 
by the ordinary gradual operation of physical causes ; 
that the sediment was provided by the wearing down 



GEOLOGIC THEORY MERE CONJECTURE. 113 

of unstratified rock ; that there have been successive 
creations of animal and vegetable races ; that the 
fossil remains of plants and animals were imbedded in 
the sediment as it gradually washed down ; that this 
gradual, and all but imperceptibly slow process, must 
have continued through infinite, or all but infinite 
periods of duration ; and therefore that the earth must 
have existed, indefinitely earlier than the " six days" 
of the Mosaic narrative. This last particular, which 
is the top stone of their theory, is their inference from 
the preceding assumptions. 

The theory is mere matter of conjecture. The 
notion that the solid surface of the globe was at first 
all rock, is mere conjecture. Greology can furnish no 
evidence whatever that any portion of the surface was 
at first rock of any kind. It cannot show that all the 
primitive rock which now appears, or ever has appear- 
ed, has not been raised up from beneath the general 
level, since the operation of geological changes and of 
sedimentary formations commenced. On the contrary, 
the notorious facts that sedimentary rocks and fossil 
remains are found in different countries on the sum- 
mits of the most elevated mountains, where perpetual 
congelation has preserved them from abrasion ; and 
that the granite surface of Sweden is -reported to be 
gradually rising at the present time, might rather 
justify the conclusion that all the primitive rooks 



114 THE EPOCH OE CREATION. 

have in like manner been raised, and within a period 
not more remote. If the loftiest masses have been so 
raised, who can say that those of inferior height have 
not ? It may give the reins to speculation, and may 
conjecture, that the earth was formed by the operation 
of mechanical and chemical forces, of what is called 
nebular matter ; but can offer no semblance of evi- 
dence that such was its origin ; that it was at first in 
a state of igneous fluidity, and that the crust when it 
cooled was granite ; but it can offer nothing of the 
nature of proof to that effect. On the contrary, the 
facts that melted matter thrown up from below the 
crust by volcanic action is not granite when it cools, 
and that lava cannot be made of granite without other 
ingredients, might at least suggest the probability 
that the granite crust was never in a melted state. 

It may conjecture that the plants and animals 
which are fossilized were provided somewhere, but 
cannot tell where ; that they were transported some- 
how to their destined places, but cannot tell how ; 
that being transported they were by some means kept 
in a perfect state without injury to their most fragile 
parts and delicate tissues, long enough for the accumu- 
lation of sedimentary matter by the action of natural 
causes to bury and fossilize them, but cannot show by 
what means. 



CHA.PTER V. 

Notices of some portions of the Chapter " On the bearing of Final 
C auses on Geo]ogic History," in the " Foot-prints of the Creator/* 
by Hugh Miller — His inference of successive creations from the 
relative proportion of Brain to the Spinal Cord in different races of 
Animals — His version of the Fourth Commandment. 

The sagacious author of the work entitled " Foot- 
prints of the Creator," has constructed an argument 
favorable to the hypothesis that man was brought 
forward upon the scene of terrestrial things long after 
the creation and extinction of the inferior races whose 
remains are entombed in the nether rocks ; founded 
upon the notion that " the large reasoning brain" by 
which he is distinguished, " would have been wholly 
out of place in the earlier ages;" namely, the ages 
during which those inferior races had their career, and 
were fossilized. For he supposes that during those 
ages this planet was but partially consolidated, and 
was the scene of convulsions and earthquakes which 
would have frightened man and dethroned his reason, 



116 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

but which might have been endured by " animals of 
a limited range of instinct." " Fishes and reptiles," 
he observes, " were the proper inhabitants of our 
planet during the ages of the earth-tempests ; and 
when under the operation of the chemical laws these 
had become less frequent and terrible, the higher 
mammals were introduced. That prolonged ages of 
these, tempests did exist, and that they gradually set- 
tled down, until the state of things became at length 
comparatively fixed and stable, few geologists will 
be disposed to deny." He then cites the upheaved 
and distorted condition of various rocks as evidence 
that they were forced into that condition by move- 
ments of terrific violence, at periods when such vio- 
lence was common ; and adds ; " The reasoning brain 
would have been wholly at fault in a scene of things in 
which it could, neither foresee the exterminating 
calamity while yet distant, nor control it when it had 
come ; and so the reasoning brain was not produced 
until the scene had undergone a slow but thorough 
process of change, during which, at each progressive 
stage, it had furnished a platform for higher and still 
higher life. When the coniferse could flourish on the 
land, and fishes in the seas, fishes and cone-bearing 
plants were created ; when the earth became a fit 
habitat for reptiles and birds, reptiles and birds were 
produced ; with the dawn of a more stable and 



HUGH HELLER ON FINAL CAUSES. 117 

mature state of things, the sagacious quadruped was 
ushered in ; and, last of all, when man's house was 
fully prepared for him — when the data on which it is 
his nature to reason and calculate, had become fixed 
and certain, — the reasoning, calculating brain, was 
moulded by the creative finger, and. man became a 
living soul. Such seems to be the true reading of the 
wondrous inscription chiselled deep in the rocks. It 
furnishes us with no clue by which to unravel the 
unapproachable mysteries of creation ; these mysteries 
belong to the wondrous Creator and to Him only. 
There is no geological fact nor revealed doctrine with 
which this special scheme of development does not 
agree."— P. 303. 

Now if there is any legible inscription chiselled in 
the rocks, and if the author has translated it correctly, 
it reveals to us that there were successive creations of 
plants and animals at widely distant intervals. During 
the ages of this process, " Nature lay dead in a waste 
theatre of rock, vapor, and sea, in which the insensate 
laws, chemical, mechanical, and elastic, carried on 
their blind, unintelligent processes." — P. 330. " The 
creative fiat went forth," and the dynasty of the fish 
was introduced.. Many ages subsequently, " through 
an act of creation, the dynasty of the reptile began ;" 
and so of the rest. 

Only assume that the author's reading of the inscrip- 



118 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

tion is the true one, and that there are unapproachable 
mysteries of creation, to which this earliest and most 
recondite revelation affords no clue, and to which, of 
course, the Mosaic narrative cannot be deemed to have 
any reference, and, we may forsooth, confess our 
ignorance of the whole matter, and quietly take up 
with any geological hypothesis which may be proposed. 
If there is anything of the slightest importance to be 
known by us about the creation which is not recorded 
in the Holy Scriptures ; if it concerns us to know the 
mode in which physical effects are produced by the 
Divine will ; if the inspired record of the great moral 
reasons and purposes for which the work of creation 
was accomplished, will not suffice us ; if the Scripture 
account of the creation relates only to the last of a 
long succession of creations ; if no account of these 
earlier creations is vouchsafed to us, except that 
which is inscribed in the rocks, and the meaning of 
that can only be guessed at and assumed as one most 
conformable to a preconceived theory concerning the 
rocks themselves ; then it would be modest in us to be 
content with our total ignorance of the matter, and 
confine ourselves within the legitimate and well- 
known limits of scientific observation and induction. 

It would be very easy for a geologist of half Mr. 
Miller's abilities, half his capacity of observation, his 
powers of analysis, and his exuberance of invention, 



MILLER— FINAL CAUSES. 119 

and resource, to demolish his chapter on Final Causes 
without taking more than half as much liberty of 
assumption and conjecture as he takes- He betrays 
indubitable tokens of being spell-bound, to the extent 
of infatuation, by the foregone conclusion of his theory 
concerning the high antiquity of the earth and the 
succession of animal and vegetable creations. In that 
conclusion, as a geological inference, he is immovably 
fixed ; and if it palpably conflicts with the text of 
Scripture, and the geological inscription on the rocks 
is so far illegible or equivocal as to require a comment, 
he is enough infatuated to endeavor to support it by 
such hypotheses and conjectures as his prolific imagi- 
nation can supply. One must conceive him to have 
pored so intently over geological phenomena as to have 
become insensible to things of another sort beyond 
them. Like some men of trade, of whom it is said 
that the penny which they see is in such close contact 
with their visual organ, as to eclipse and render them 
insensible to the guinea beyond. It is quite possible, 
no doubt, for a good man to allow his mind to be so 
engrossed by physical studies, so imbued with the 
feelings, associations, fellowships, and theories, con- 
nected with them, as to keep all other things out of it, 
or allow them only a subordinate, occasional, and 
unimportant share of his attention. And by degrees 
he may come to think that the physical things which 



120 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

fall under his observation are in themselves of the first 
importance, and that the puzzling questions which they 
suggest require to be resolved in order to clear up the 
mysteries of the universe ; that they present them- 
selves at the very outset of inquiry, and must be 
accounted for by some theory, hypothesis, or conjec- 
ture, in order to any understanding of the nature of 
things. And if his studies are geological, and conduct 
him down into the bowels of the earth, the foundations, 
foot prints, and first beginnings of the operations of 
nature, he may easily persuade himself that he is 
there to discover not merely the first rudiments of 
things, but a record and revelation of the causes and 
operations by which they came to be what they are, 
and the reasons and orderly succession of their 
changes. To have found a record which he could not 
decipher, into some hypothesis which geology at least 
could not absolutely disprove, would perplex and 
humble him, and disrobe his science of nearly all 
which makes it the admiration of one portion of the 
world, and the stumbling-block and scandal of another. 
Had the same good man, however, commenced his 
course of studies concerning the works of the Creator, 
in another school and in another class ; had he com- 
menced not with the study of insensate laws and 
blind unintelligent processes ; but with things which 
are as intelligible and as certain as are the axioms of 



MILLER FINAL CAUSES. 121 

geometry, things taught by the Creator himself, in 
language of his own inditing, of which the laws are as 
fixed and as invariable as those of any science ; had he 
begun by ascertaining what is thus taught concerning 
the creation, its epoch, its connections and relations 
with the moral purposes, agencies, manifestations, and 
results, of the great scheme of Providence and redemp- 
tion ; had he in tracing the progress of this scheme 
noted the occurrence of supernatural interpositions, 
and the reasons of them and their subserviency to 
moral ends ; and duly considered the apostasy of man, 
the terrestrial head of his and the inferior races, the 
visitation of moral and physical judgments consequent 
thereon, the curse upon the earth itself on his account, 
not by the gradual operation of natural laws tending 
to improve it, but by the direct judicial agency of 
Omnipotence, changing it from its perfect paradisiacal 
condition in which it was suited to be the perpetual 
abode of man in his perfect, happy, unfallen state, to 
a condition corresponding to his fallen, degraded, 
miserable condition of guilt, condemnation, disease, 
and death, and without supernatural interposition, of 
utter and eternal despair ; had he traced this line of 
things down to the removal of the curse, the restitu- 
tion of all things, the resurrection of the dead and the 
coincident renovation of the earth and re-instatement 

of it in its original condition ; had he taken this course 
6 



122 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

of inquiry, and fully satisfied and convinced himself 
of what the inspired volume reveals concerning it 
before he attempted to construe the v pretendedinscrip 
tion and fancied revelation of the rocks, he would 
have had something to go by upon which he could 
place reliance, something to admonish him of the 
insignificance of physical in comparison with moral 
and spiritual things, something to maintain upon his 
mind a constant impression of the majesty and glory 
of the Creator, of his perfections as displayed in all his 
works, of the transcendent moral purposes and ends of 
his entire administration ; something to restrain him 
from lawless theorizing and conjectural hypothesis. 

In the author's chapter above referred to, on " The 
Bearing of Final Causes on Geologic History," many 
shrewd and fine things are said ; but so far as it 
attempts to explain anything which the Scriptures 
have not explained, or advances explanations different 
from those vouchsafed in Scripture, it assumes what 
cannot be proved, exalts the rocks and their relics far 
above their proper place in the great system of things, 
disparages the inspired record, the existence of which 
is far more matter of wonder than all the physical 
phenomena of earth, and is in short mere hypothesis 
and conjecture. Let it be judged of by a further 
notice of that part of the chapter from which extracts 



RELATIVE PROPORTION OF BRAIN. 123 

are quoted above, and a notice of another portion 
which relates to the fourth commandment. 

In the quoted extracts and their connections the 
author first assumes, in support of the hypothesis, that 
the earth was originally in a state incompatible with 
the existence of any animal or vegetable life, and that 
at successive stages of improvement successive crea- 
tions took place, and corresponding extirpations of 
those which preceded to make room for those which 
followed ; that as the brain in fishes bears an average 
proportion to the spinal cord of not more than two to 
one, while the brain in reptiles bears an average pro- 
portion of two and a half to one, in birds of three to 
one, and in mammals of four to one, therefore being 
best adapted by having the smallest modicum of brain, 
to exist in the most imperfect state of the earth com- 
patible with animal life, fish were created first ; and 
having run their course, died out and been buried, and 
petrified in the sedimentary rocks which now contain 
their relics, gave place at the next stage of improve- 
ment to their more intelligent or more sensitive, or at 
least larger-brained successors, the reptiles ; and these 
in like manner, after the necessary lapse of ages, gave 
place to birds, and they in turn to beasts, and they to 
man, whose brain bears an average proportion to 
the spinal cord of twenty-three to one. If this 
theory be true, there ought not to be any fishes or 



124 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

reptiles now in the improved earth. Taking this 
graduated scale of proportionate quantity of brain as 
the rule of creative interposition, corresponding to the 
degree of improvement in the condition of the earth, 
the author is met by the Lamarckian theory, that 
" the lower brains were developed into the higher ;" 
which he rebukes by observing that " all the facts of 
geological science are hostile to it," and alleging that 
fishes though created first, and being lowest in the 
proportion of brain, are in fact as a class of animals 
superior to reptiles, so that a development of the fish 
into the reptile would be a reverse process, a develop- 
ment from the more to the less perfect, which could 
never result in quadrupeds or man. But what now 
has become of the assumed rule of creative action, by 
which the most stupid races were to be created and 
have their great geologic period, before the less stupid, 
so as to coincide with the assumed stages of improve- 
ment in the condition of the earth ? Either it was no 
rule, or it was violated. And if the reason why one 
race had less brain than another, was that they might 
exist and endure the tempests of their geologic cycle, 
then there was a mistake in the allocation of the fish. 
Had Baal been the Creator, and waited a million or 
two of ages for the insensate laws of matter to improve 
the earth up to the exact point where an immediate 
creation of newts and serpents was called for, some 



THEORY AS TO THE BRAIN", UNFOUNDED. 125 

plausible excuse for his blunder might be devised. It 
might be urged as in another case of his delinquency, 
" he is a god," though absent ; " either he is talking, 
or he is pursuing, or he is on a journey, or peradven- 
ture he sleepeth and must be awaked." 

But the blunder is far worse for the geologic theory 
than it proved to be for the nimble creatures upon 
whom the first experiment of life was tried, for they 
survived the storm which raged beneath and over 
them, went the round of their circle, died and were 
entombed ; and thus furnished us with good and suffi- 
cient evidence that the theory is false ; that the capa- 
city of enduring the shock of tempests does not 
depend upon the relative quantity of brain to the spinal 
cord. For if it is conceded, and affirmed, as it is by our 
author, as a fact so notorious and indisputable as to 
overthrow the Lamarckian theory of development, 
that fishes with the lowest proportion of brain are 
superior to reptiles with one fourth or twenty-five per 
cent, more of brain ; and though so decidedly supe- 
rior in all that the brain can be the means of, are yet 
better adapted to battle with the crude condition of 
things and the terrific storms of the first epoch of life, 
and therefore were created first, then the rule of crea- 
tive action was not deduced from the proportion of any 
given quantity of brain to any foreseen or unavoid- 
able severity of tempests. And if the most stupid 



126 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

creatures could, by reason of their stupidity, exist at 
the most imperfect stage of improvement of the planet, 
and endure the tempests of that stage better than any 
more sensitive class of creatures, then there was no 
occasion to wait for the lapse of ages of further 
improvement of the planet, before creating the rep- 
tiles. They might have been created at the same 
time with the fish as well as not, and lived contempo- 
raneously as they do now. Indeed they would have 
had the best of it. For on the coming on of a storm 
from overhead, they could retreat to the water ; and in 
case of a tempest from beneath they could take to the 
solid earth, which the fishes could not do. 

Moreover, if the reptiles with twenty-five per cent, 
more of brain than the fish, could live under the same 
circumstances as the latter, then who knows but that 
the bird with only twenty per cent, more brain than the 
reptile, and the mamifer with only one third more 
brain than the bird, might live very well, as they now 
do, under the same circumstances ? 

It should be considered that it is only the most 
perfect of these several classes that had so large a 
proportion of brain beyond the maximum of their 
inferiors respectively. The least perfect probably 
had very little more than the best of the next inferior 
class ; so that a goose or a turkey buzzard would have 
little if any more brain than a sprightly pike or a 



MILLER HIS INFERENCES NOT SOUND. 127 

cuttle-fish, and less than a bird-catching snake or a 
boa-constrictor ; and the woodchuck and the donkey 
might have less than the highest specimens of reptiles 
and birds. 

On what account it is, since it is not in quantity of 
brain, that the author considers the fishes superior to 
the reptiles of those most ancient creations, he. does 
not state. The fact, however, if it be one, is import- 
ant, since it strikes a physical death-blow to the 
development hypothesis. And who knows but that 
the reptiles, having obtained the birthright of the 
fishes, as Jacob obtained that of Esau, held the privi- 
lege ever afterwards ? A degree of probability to that 
effect might be inferred from the historical narrative 
of the only creation of reptiles of which we have any 
inspired account. For in that account the reptile, 
whatever may have been true as to the dimensions of 
his brain, appears in some other particulars to have 
been superior not only to the fishes but also to the 
mammiferous quadrupeds — u the serpent was more 
subtle than any beast of the field." 

If the reader is not fully satisfied that this brain 
theory is untenable, considered as having any possible 
relation to the hypothesis of successive creations and 
corresponding improvements of the earth by the 
swathing and wet-nursing of blind, unintelligent, 



128 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

insensate laws of dead matter, let it be considered 
in another aspect. 

The theory assumes that the earth, from a state 
originally of utter imperfection, went on improving in 
its condition and fitness to be the platform of organized 
existence through a countless succession of ages, while 
the animal races brought on to it successively as it 
became fit to be their habitation, became from the 
dawn of their existence subject to a process of decline 
and degradation, under which they grew more and 
more imperfect till they could no longer live, and so 
one after another of them " died out." It seems at 
first a little singular that the dead earth should go on 
improving, and by improving get fit for living crea- 
tures, and that the living creatures being produced as 
soon as it was fit for them, should be subject to a 
reverse, retrograde law ; and probably the hypothesis 
would have contained no such provision had it not 
been necessary to clear the platform for new crea- 
tions. There would have been no necessity for new 
creations, had the first races continued without degen- 
erating and running out. But new creations are 
absolutely indispensable to the geologic hypothesis of 
antiquity. The very high antiquity of the earth in 
comparison with the Scripture epoch, being the essen- 
tial point, it is necessary that the hypothesis should 



MILLER — HIS ARGUMENT FALLACIOUS. 129 

treat the matter as though the creatures were made 
for the earth and the geological argument, and not the 
earth for the creatures. 

But this instructive portion of the hypothesis has a 
bearing on the brain theory. This latter theory 
teaches that a reptile is perfect as one of his class, or 
as perfect as his nature permits, when his brain bears 
to his spinal cord the proportion of two and a half to 
one ; the bird of three to one ; the beast of four to one ; 
and man of twenty-three to one. With that pro- 
portion they exhibit the perfection of their natures ; 
but without it, or with any considerable excess or 
defect, there would be a redundancy or want of those 
faculties or capacities depending on the brain, which 
distinguish respectively the several races and the in- 
dividuals of each race. 

Nov/ is it the brain and its relative proportion of 
size which constitutes this distinguishing characteris- 
tic, or is it something distinct from the brain, of which 
that organ may be an instrument, but on which, 
and especially on its relative dimensions, it has no 
dependence whatever ? Consider this question with 
reference to reasoning man, on the supposition that the 
average proportion of his brain to his spinal cord is as 
twenty-three to one. Does his power of reasoning 
depend in any degree upon that proportion, or any 

proportion approximating to that ? Is it not notorious 
6# 



130 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

that considerable portions of that material substance 
may be withdrawn by the instruments of surgery, and 
that the whole of it, except a shrivelled figment, may 
be dissipated by disease without impairing the sub- 
ject's power of reasoning ? Is it not well known that 
the like operations may take place in the lower animals 
without impairing any of their previous faculties ? 
And if this may happen to some individuals of the 
several races, it might happen to many, and to all, 
without affecting in any degree their capacity to 
endure the alleged earth tempests. And so far as the 
dimensions of his brain were concerned, man might as 
well have been created at the same epoch with the 
beasts and birds. The size of his brain did not decide 
his fitness as a reasoner, for a particular stage of im- 
provement in the condition of the earth. That he had, 
in a higher degree than the inferior races, that some- 
thing distinct from the brain, which employs the brain 
as one of its instruments, and that that something had 
proportionably more to do in his case than in the other 
cases, so as to require an instrument relatively larger, 
may all be very true. But he might have been fully 
as much frightened, and his reason fully as much 
confounded by a sudden, unforeseen, and resistless 
outburst of storm and tempest, with half his quantity 
of brain as with the whole of it. In other words, a 
necessity of his having a given quantity of brain in 



SUCCESSIVE CREATIONS NOT PROVED. 131 

order to his being a reasoner, and the incompatibility 
of his having that amount of brain and reasoning, with 
a tempest-tossed state of the earth, could not have 
been a reason for postponing his creation till the tem- 
pests were over. Probably the relation of the brain in 
the lower races and in man, to that something of 
which the brain is an instrument, is one of the unap- 
proachable mysteries of creation which the geological 
hypothesis does not unravel. And it is pitiful and 
abominable for a geologist, an author, and a magnate 
in the science of geology, to confound that incompre- 
hensible relation with the brain itself, and make it the 
basis or an essential element of an hypothesis of suc- 
cessive creations. 

The simple truth in the case is, that there were no 
successive creations, and of course there were no 
reasons for them, nor any evidences of them. They 
exist only in fanciful conjectures, inferences, and 
hypotheses ; and other geologists, as well as this au- 
thor, in speculating about them, inconsistently cross 
their own track and confute themselves. They are all 
occasionally like Lamarck, who " had a trick of dream- 
ing when wide awake, and calling his dreams philoso- 
phy." — Footprints. 

According to the geological theory the higher orders 
of animals chronologically succeeded the lower; and 
first, when the earth was sufficiently improved to 



132 



THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 



permit their existence, fishes were created, and during 
their " dynasty" no superior class of creatures was 
brought upon the stage. In course of time they de- 
generated and died out ; their remains were imbedded 
in the rocks, and their dynasty was thus closed 
and ended. Next, at a more improved period of the 
planet, " the dynasty of the reptiles" had its beginning, 
progress, and termination in like manner. Then fol- 
lowed the creation, reign, and extinction of the birds, 
and after them the dynasty of the beasts. Now if we 
follow these successive dynasties down to their graves, 
we ought to find conclusive evidence that they were 
buried as soon as they died, or at least before their 
successors were created and put in possession of their 
former dwelling-place. And so beyond a question they 
must have been, if they died, and died out, and if their 
inhumation was effected in the way described by the 
geologists. For their remains, uninhumed. could not 
without a miracle be preserved through a long tract 
of ages to be then entombed side by side with the 
remains of dynasties succeeding them, and in sedi- 
mentary beds formed long after their career of life 
and rule had ceased. None of them, not one of them, 
if the theory is true, ought to be found, or is or could 
be found in any higher or other sedimentary stratum, 
than that which was formed for their sepulchre, during 
the continuance of their life and reign. For the inter- 



RELICS OF FISHES, REPTILES, BIRDS, ETC. MIXED. 133 

val between the supposed successive creations was, by 
the theory, immensely long, millions of ages perhaps, 
or more, during which the sedimentary deposits went 
on to improve the earth up to the fit point of the 
coming dynasty ; and if it went on, and the first 
creation died off, its relics must have been buried up 
before the relics of the second creation were deposited. 
But what do the geologists tell us ? Why, they 
honestly announce the fact, inconsistent as it is with 
their theory, that the relics of these successive " dy- 
nasties," instead of having been buried as they should 
have been to sustain the theory, in their respective 
and proper places of sepulture, are found more or less 
diffused and mixed with each other in the formations 
of the supposed successive periods. 

In the Silurian group of sedimentary rocks, which 
is next to the lowest, marine shells, Crustacea, and 
various fishes are found. In the next group, the car- 
boniferous, are fishes, reptiles, insects, and fresh-water 
shells. In the next, the red sandstone, are fishes, rep- 
tiles, birds, Crustacea, &o. In the next group, the 
oolitic, are fishes, reptiles, birds, quadrupeds (mamma- 
lia), cetacea, Crustacea, insects. Then in the cretaceous 
and tertiary groups, are fishes, reptiles, birds, mamma- 
lia, Crustacea shells, insects. So that the several classes, 
the fancied " dynasties" of fishes, reptiles, birds, and 
beasts, instead of being respectively created, living, 



134 THE EPOCH OP CREATION. 

dying, and being buried each in a period chronolo- 
gically and widely separated from the others, were, as 
their relics unequivocally testify, created at one and 
the same epoch, and lived, and died, and were buried 
together in one and the same comprehensive period. 
Fishes, reptiles, and birds, are found in rocks formed 
long after they, by the theory, ceased to exist, and 
were consigned to their last home ; and mammalia are 
found in rocks formed before they were created, as well 
as after they became extinct. 

The poetry of brain-disturbing storms and tempests, 
might therefore have been spared. There was no need 
to marshal all the blind insensate forces of nature, 
chemical, mechanical, atmospheric, aquatic, plutonic, 
galvanic, electric, to terrify the dynasties of smaller 
or larger brains, as the eruption of hordes of starving 
Cossacks terrifies the slumbering hamlets which they 
come to sack. 

The same conclusion results from another considera- 
tion ; namely, that the supposed violent action of those 
physical forces in producing earthquakes and volcanic 
tempests, and thereby, according to the theory, elevat- 
ing and distorting the stratified masses, could not 
have taken place till after the several groups of sedi- 
mentary rocks with their fossil relics were deposited. 
This is demonstrated beyond a question, by the fact 
that those groups, which all agree were formed in a 



FOSSIL GROUPS FORMED BEFORE TILTED UP. 135 

horizontal position by the precipitation of sediment in 
water, are in their due order and connection, tilted up 
together to different degrees of inclination, in different 
localities, and in many instances to a vertical position, 
which shows that the disturbing forces from beneath 
must have been dormant till the formations were com- 
plete. For if the lowest fossiliferous stratum had been 
upheaved during the fish dynasty, or that and the next 
during the reptile, the superior ones could not have 
been deposited on them, or afterwards tilted to a con- 
formable position. The whole process of sedimentary 
formation must undoubtedly have been completed, 
before any tilting up of the lowest and the highest 
groups together could take place, consistently with 
their present actual position. And therefore it cannot 
possibly be true that the fishes were created ages 
before the reptiles, the reptiles ages before the birds, 
and the birds ages before the beasts ; and of course 
their respective quantities of brain could not have 
been intended to fit them for any foreseen intensity of 
earth tempests. On the contrary they must have had 
a calm and quiet time during their lives, deaths, and 
burials. . 

It is remarkable how the minds of men, and even 
of good men, when so engrossed and enamored with 
theories and speculations in physical science, as to 
fancy that there is in its phenomena and its laws a 



136 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

competency to guide them, and an intelligibleness and 
authority, or at least an intelligibleness, superior to 
the written revelation, easily adopt and become recon- 
ciled to constructions of the inspired record, palpably 
inconsistent with its import as read in conformity with 
the known, legitimate, and established laws of lan- 
guage. In such cases they practically exalt what 
they deem the testimony of nature, above the testi- 
mony of the omniscient Creator ; and under the scarf 
and hood of science as priestly vestments, seem to 
idolize nature, and in derogation of the second article 
of the Decalogue, to bow down to things in the earth 
and in the waters under the earth. They become 
imbued with a superstitious reverence of physical 
nature and science, and the claims and teachings of 
inspiration are obscured to their view. The custom- 
ary exclusion from their inquiries, recognitions, and 
theories, of all that is supernatural, tends to generate 
a prejudice and aversion against the miracles of Scrip- 
ture. And hence it happens, with geologists for 
example, and perhaps without exception, that when, 
out of deference to their conclusions, they reject or 
explain away the plain import of the Mosaic narrative 
of creation, in respect to its epoch, its comprehensive- 
ness, or other particulars, they find it easy to reject 
the narrative of the deluge, in respect to its univer- 
sality, and its effects as a visitation of judgment on 



MR. MILLER ON THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 137 

the earth ; and in like manner to reject or lightly 
esteem the record of other supernatural interpositions. 
And they appear to do this under the impression that 
they are all the more consistent believers of the Bible, 
as being the truest interpreters of its meaning. 

Without observing these things with any special 
reference to the gifted author of the " Foot-prints of 
the Creator," his exegesis of the fourth commandment 
may yet be noticed as an illustration of what is meant. 
Being firmly fixed in the geologic conclusions, that in 
the course from stage to stage, of the elevatory process 
of physical improvement of the earth, there had been 
successive creations, he readily brings himself to 
think, that the " six days" in which the Lord made 
the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them 
is," represent the immense periods which intervened 
between those stages of improvement ; that the 
seventh day on which the Creator rested, represents 
the ensuing period, including the present and all 
future time ; and that the reason why man was 
required to keep every seventh natural day of twenty- 
four hours, was simply a reason of proportion, 
Accordingly he proposes the following version or sub- 
stitution, in which he " sees no absurdity ;" " Six 
periods shalt thou labor and do all thy work ; but on 
the seventh period shalt thou do no labor, thou nor 
thy son, &c. ; for in six periods the Lord made heaven 



138 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested 
the seventh period ; therefore the Lord blessed the 
seventh period, and hallowed it." Because the Creator 
did all his work in six periods of immense duration, 
and rested throughout the whole remaining period of 
time, present and future ; therefore, man was to labor, 
and do all his work in six natural days, and wholly 
cease from labor on the seventh. But supposing the 
natural days to bear the right proportion to the 
periods, or maintain the proportion of six days and 
periods, to seven, concinnity would seem to demand in 
carrying out the parallel, that man should never do 
any more work after the first six days of his life, and 
that having rested the seventh natural day, we should 
hear no more of him. But the author's hypothesis 
and his ingenuity help him over this small difficulty. 
Being sure that the six days of creation were six 
periods, and consequently that the ensuing day of rest, 
inasmuch as a day of twenty-four hours would be out 
of all proportion to the six periods of duration, was a 
period, although future, of duration corresponding to 
those which preceded it, he thinks that man's day of 
rest may have been intended to include the whole of 
his natural life ; and in that view of the case we must 
of course conclude that it was to be a day of seven 
periods of incessant labor. But hear him ; for though 
generally a lucid writer, he is not altogether so as a 



NEW VERSION OF THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 139 

commentator. " God rested on the Sabbath, and 
sanctified it ; and therefore man ought also to rest on 
the Sabbath, and keep it holy. But God's Sabbath 
of rest may still exist ; the work of Redemption may 
be the work [rest !] of his Sabbath day. That ele- 
vatory process through successive acts of creation 
which engaged him during myriads of ages, was of an 
ordinary week day character ; but when the term of 
his moral government began, the elevatory process 
proper to it assumed the Divine character of the 
Sabbath. This special view appears to lend peculiar 
emphasis to the reason embodied in the command- 
ment. The collation of the passage with the geologic 
record seems, as if by a species of re-translation, to 
make it enunciate as its injunction, ' keep this day, 
not merely as a day of memorial related to a past fact, 
but also as a day of co-operation with God in the work 
of elevation in relation both to a present fact, and a 
future purpose.' God keeps his Sabbath, it says, in 
order that he may save ; keep yours also, that you 
may be saved ! It serves, besides, to throw light on the 
prominence of the Sabbatical command, in a digest of 
law of which no part or tittle can pass away until the 
fulfilment of all things. During the present dynasty 
of probation and trial, that special work [rest !] of both 
God and man, on which the character of the future 
dynasty depends, is the. Sabbath day work [rest ?] of 



140 THE EPOCH OP CREATION. 

saving and being saved." The author must have 
forgotten, for a moment, while writing this exposition, 
that the Sabbath day was sanctified for man, imme- 
diately after the six days' work of creation was 
finished, when man was perfect, and needed no eleva- 
tory process, and when, not having apostatized, he 
needed no salvation. And though he may have been 
physically awake, he must have been mentally asleep, 
and dreaming, when he collated the fourth command- 
ment with the geologic record, so as to make it, " by 
a species of re-translation," enunciate a meaning 
wholly diverse and contrary to its meaning in the 
inspired record of Moses, as read and construed in 
conformity with the uniform laws of language. The 
beasts, whose predecessors figure so largely in " the 
geologic record," are in this geological re-translation 
of Moses, most unwarrantably overlooked ; and at least 
virtually denied any Sabbath whatever, since being 
saved is not predicable of them. The command says, 
" In the seventh day thou shalt not do any ivork, thou 
nor thy — cattle." 

A more preposterous, not to say reckless and irre- 
verent jumble of words and ideas, than this exposition 
contains, is surely nowhere to be found, unless it be in 
the fancied inscription in the nether rocks. It is so 
surcharged with absurdity, as neither to appear absurd 
to its author, who saw only through the opake glass 



COMMENTS ON HIS EXPOSITION. 141 

of fossil relics, nor to require any lengthened refuta- 
tion. With such liberty of imposing any meaning on 
the sacred text which any theory or hypothesis ma}/- 
require, the Bible may be made to support all the 
errors and false theories which have ever been put 
forth, and one as well as another. It were far better, 
far more modest, far less hurtful, not to attempt to 
reconcile the Scriptures with a theory which requires 
such palpable and outrageous perversion of their 
plainest passages, their precepts and moral laws which 
involve the moral and religious obligations, and the 
eternal interests of man. If such passages, a punc- 
tilious practical obedience to which was required on 
pain of death, may be explained to mean anything or 
nothing, to suit a physical theory, then the Bible is, as 
to its meaning, the most uncertain of all books, or, 
rather it has no meaning, and is wholly unworthy of 
confidence. And in regard to Moses and the Moral 
Law, we are left to infer that if he had known what 
our geologists know of the inscription and revelation 
in the rocks of bygone ages, be would have revised 
and corrected his account of the creation, and would 
have forborne to copy the moral law from the tablets 
of stone, where it was written with the finger of Grod, 
and made his version conform to the earlier and more 
perfect record. And in that case he would have for- 
borne also, where, afterwards, referring among other 



142 



THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 



things to the announcement of that Law from Sinai, 
in a voico which shook the earth, to trifle with the 
Israelites by saying ; " Ye shall not add unto the 
word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish 
aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments 
of the Lord your Grod, which I command you." — 
Deut. iv. 

"When a professed believer in the Bible has so much 
confidence in his inferences from geological facts as to 
treat the Scriptures in this manner, his example, 
under the pretence, affectation, and cant of science, 
falsely so called, is of far worse tendency than that of 
the unblushing pantheist, at the extreme of human 
blindness and presumption on the one hand, or that of 
the dreaming idealist on the other, for they reject the 
Bible altogether, without attempting to force it to 
support their theories. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

Notice of Doct. Hitchcock — Religion of Geology 

The following extracts from a recent edition of 
" The Religion of Geology and its connected sciences, 
by Edward Hitchcock, D.D., LL.D., President of 
Amherst College and Professor of Natural Theology 
and Greology," will show that the principal doctrines 
ascribed to foreign authors, are held at the present 
time by the ablest and most widely known Geological 
Author on this side of the Atlantic. These doctrines 
are put forth as the science^ or what the science 
teaches ; and on that ground the theologian is expected 
to modify his interpretation of Scripture, so as to make 
it at least not inconsistent with the teachings of this 
science. 

The present writer is not a little anxious rightly to 
understand and represent this respected author, and 
therefore quotes largely from his pages. In his view, 
the question at issue is a vital one in its relation to 



144 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

the inspired record concerning the creation of the 
world, its epoch, the reasons of the physical changes 
which have taken place, the agencies by which they 
have been effected, the occurrence of successive crea- 
tions, the reign of death, the extent of the Noachic 
deluge, and other things treated of in the Holy Scrip- 
tures. If he understands Doct. H. correctly, then 
geology, as a science, is to be regarded as a more 
ancient and more intelligible revelation in respect to 
these questions, than the text of Scripture ; and as 
famishing reliable and sufficient data for correcting, 
modifying, and re-interpreting that text ; and therefore 
that the natural theology which this science teaches 
must be studied and comprehended first, that its lights 
may be employed to elucidate, correct, or modify the 
hitherto received constructions of revelation. 

It is manifest that if such claims and pretensions 
belong to geology as a science, then a secondary, in- 
ferior, and unauthoritative place must be assigned to 
the inspired record, so far as these subjects are con- 
cerned. But if it is not the science of geology that 
has any such claims or pretensions, but only the 
assumptions, hypotheses, and inferences, which the 
geologists, according to their fancies or preconceived 
theories, respectively deduce from the physical facts 
which constitute their science, then the conflict in the 
case is not a conflict between science and revelation — 



DEFINITIONS OF GEOLOGY. 145 

the inconsistencies to be reconciled are those only of 
erring mortals, in conflict with the authoritative, unal- 
terable Word of the Creator and Ruler of the World. 

Doctor H. in his work entitled " Elementary (xe- 
ology," defines geology as follows, in the 1st Section : 

" Definition. Geology is the History of the mineral 
masses that compose the earth, and of the organic 
remains which they contain. — Def. Every part of the 
globe, which is not animal or vegetable, including 
water and air, is regarded as mineral. — Def. The 
term rock, in its popular acceptation, embraces only 
the solid parts of the globe ; but in geological lan- 
guage, it includes also the loose materials — the soils, 
clays, and gravels that cover the solid parts — Stratifi- 
cation. — Def. The rocks which compose the globe, 
are divided into two great classes ; the stratified and 

UNSTRATIFIED." 

Webster defines geology to be " The doctrine or 
science of the structure of the earth or terraqueous 
globe, and of the substances which compose it." 

The science of geology, then, is the knowledge of 
facts respecting the physical substances which compose 
the globe, and of the physical relations and connections 
of those substances with one another in the structure 
of the earth. These facts are to be learnt by obser- 
vation ; and all that is to be known of them is to be 

learnt by observation. They are simple, comprehen- 

7 



146 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

sible, fixed facts. They can be described on paper 
simply as facts, without any conjectures as to how 
they were caused, or any inferences as to the time 
occupied in their causation. The knowledge of them is 
the science of geology. They are wholly distinct from, 
and independent of the notions, theories, inferences, 
conjectures, and hypotheses of geologists or others who 
observe them. These notions, theories, &c. may be in 
the utmost degree inconsistent with the plainest state- 
ments of revelation, while the facts from- which they 
are pretended to be deduced, may be obviously and 
demonstrably perfectly consistent with those state- 
ments. The geological theories and inferences may 
proceed upon the assumption that no moral reasons 
existed for the causation of the facts observed, and that 
no miraculous or supernatural agency was interposed 
to cause them, while the facts themselves, from their 
very nature and relations, considered in connection 
with the statements of revelation, may clearly indicate 
that their existence was due wholly to moral reasons 
and supernatural interference. 

Suppose now the geologist to go forth to examine 
the structure and materials of the globe. He observes 
two classes of rocks, stratified and unstratified. They 
are clearly distinguishable. One has a crystallized 
form and texture, the other such a form and texture 
as would result from the deposit of mud, sand, and 



SUPPOSED COURSE OF GEOLOGICAL STUDY. 147 

gravel in water. These he calls sedimentary. He 
finds of these, a regular succession of beds or layers 
which in the aggregate are some eight or ten miles in 
thickness. These layers differ from each other in 
thickness and in their mineral composition ; that is, 
in the kind of earthy materials which they were com- 
posed of. He finds them generally tilted up from the 
horizontal position in which they were deposited, to a 
greater or less degree of inclination, and sometimes to 
a vertical position, so as greatly to facilitate his ex- 
amination of them. He gives distinctive names to 
these successive layers, indicative of their mineral 
character, as gneiss, lime-stone, red sandstone, slate, 
coal, clay, &c. &c. He observes that the lowest of 
these sedimentary formations everywhere rests on 
crystalline rock or granite. Again he observes that a 
large portion of these sedimentary rocks, to the depth 
of six or seven miles, contains the skeletons and relics 
of various plants and animals, terrestrial and marine. 

Now these and the like undisputed and unquestiona- 
ble facts constitute what he calls, or ought to call, 
geology. The observation, study, and knowledge of 
them constitute the science of geology. The facts 
exist independently of any theory of causation, or of 
time occupied in effecting them. They existed ages 
before geology was studied or heard of. Greology has 
neither added to nor diminished aught from them, 



148 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

and if geologists had reported them without any of 
their theories or inferences as to the mode of causa- 
tion or the lapse of time occupied, no one would have 
dreamed of their being in any respect in conflict with 
the Scriptures. 

But the geologists, one and all, have occupied them- 
selves mainly in attempting to account for the facts 
disclosed by their researches upon some theory of the 
mode in which they were caused, the physical agencies 
by which they were effected, the time occupied, &o. 
&c. ; and they most unscientifically and unwarrantably 
denominate the facts, and their theories and inferences 
conjointly, the science of Geology. And inasmuch as 
their gratuitous theories, assumptions, and inferences, 
are in many particulars palpably inconsistent with the 
plain, obvious, natural, and legitimate import of the 
sacred record, they hesitate not to represent the teach- 
ings of their science as in conflict with the received, 
natural, and apparent meaning of the language of 
revelation. "With this view infidelity joins in, forsak- 
ing its former haunts as no longer tenable, and takes 
its refuge, not in the facts of geology, which no one 
questions, nor in the science founded on those facts, 
which affords it no hiding-place or security, but in the 
theories and assumptions of the geologists. Thus, for 
example, the infidel Lamarckian theory of development 
is founded on the geological theory of successive crea- 



PRINCIPLES STATED ET DOCT. H. 149 

tions of plants and animals at successive periods, con- 
formably to the geological theory of the gradual im- 
provement in the condition of the globe under the 
operation of physical causes, and beginning with the 
creation of the most imperfect, and rising step by step 
to those more perfect, till the climax is reached by the 
production of man. To combat this form and front 
of infidelity, some of the more recent geological 
writers abandon, as a false hypothesis, the notion that 
the products of more recent creations were in any 
respect more perfect than those which preceded, and 
aver on the contrary that the earliest were the most 
perfect, and cite the testimony of the fossil relics in 
support of this conclusion. Others, however, still 
adhere to their early and fixed impressions on this and 
other branches of geological theory. 

The work of Doctor Hitchcock now under considera- 
tion, comprises fourteen Lectures. Of these, the first 
is entitled " Revelation illustrated by Science." In 
this lecture the author states definitely what he appre- 
hends to be " the established principles of the science 
that have a bearing upon religious truth." Among 
these, as numerically designated by him, are the fol- 
lowing : — 2d. The same general laws appear to have 
always prevailed on the globe, and to have controlled 
the changes which have taken place upon and within 
it. — 3d. The geological changes which the earth has 



150 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

undergone, and is now undergoing, appear to have 
been the result of the same agencies, viz. heat and 
water. — 4th. It is demonstrated that the present con- 
tinents of the globe, with, perhaps, the exception of 
some of their highest mountains, have for a long period 
constituted the bottom of the ocean, and have been sub- 
sequently either elevated into their present position, or 
the waters have been drained off from their surface. 
This is probably the most important principle in 
geology, and though regarded with much scepticism 
by many, it is as satisfactorily proved as any principle 
of physical science, not resting on mathematical 
demonstration. — 5th. The internal parts of the earth 
are found to possess a very high temperature, nor can 
it be doubted that at least oceans of melted matter 
exist beneath the crust, and perhaps even all the deep- 
seated interior is in a state of fusion. — 6th. The fos- 
siliferous rocks, or such as contain animals and plants, 
are not less than six or seven miles in perpendicular 
thickness, and are composed of hundreds of alternating 
layers of different kinds, all of which appear to have 
been deposited just as rocks are now forming at the 
bottom of the lakes and seas, and hence their deposi- 
tion must have occupied an immense period of time. 
Even if we admit that this deposition went on in par- 
ticular places much faster than at present, a variety 
of facts forbids the supposition that this was the 



PRINCIPLES STATED BY DOCT. H. 151 

general mode of their formation. — 8th. Confirmation 
of the same important principle is found in the well 
established fact that there have been upon the globe, 
previous to the existing races, not less than five dis- 
tinct periods of organized existence ; that is, five great 
groups of animals and plants, so completely independ- 
ent that no species whatever is found in more than one 
of them, have lived and successively passed away 
before the creation of the races that now occupy the 
surface. Other standard writers make the number 
of these periods of existence as many as twelve. Com- 
parative anatomy testifies that so unlike in structure 
were those different groups, that they could not have 
existed in the same climate, and other external cir- 
cumstances. — 9th. In the earliest times in which 
animals and plants lived, the climate over the whole 
globe appears to have been as warm as, or even warmer 
than, it is now between the tropics. And the slow 
change from warmer to colder appears to have been 
the chief cause of the successive destruction of the 
different races ; and new ones were created, better 
adapted to the altered condition of the globe, and yet 
each group seems to have occupied the globe through 
a period of great length, so that we have here another 
evidence of the vast cycles of duration that must have 
rolled away, even since the earth "became a habitable 
globe. — 10th. There is no small reason to suppose that 



152 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

the globe underwent numerous changes previous to 
the time when animals were placed upon it ; that, in 
fact, the time was when the whole matter of the earth 
was in a melted state, and not improbably also even 
in a gaseous state. These points, indeed, are not as 
well established as the others that have been men- 
tioned ; but, if admitted, they give to the globe an 
incalculable antiquity. — 11th. It appears that the 
present condition of the earth's crust and surface was 
of comparatively recent commencement, otherwise 
the steep flanks of . mountains would have ceased to 
crumble down, and wide oceans would have been filled 
with alluvial deposits. — 12th. Among the thirty thou- 
sand species of animals and plants [of which let it be 
observed, near two-thirds are mollusks and radiated 
animals] found in the rocks, very few living species 
have been detected ; and even these few occur in 
the most recent rocks, while in the secondary group, 
not less than six miles thick, not a single species now 
on the globe has been discovered. Hence the present 
races did not exist till after those in the secondary 
rocks had died. No human remains have been found 
below those alluvial deposits which are now forming 
by rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Hence geology infers 
that man was one of the latest animals that was placed 
on the globe. — 13th. The surface of the earth has un- 
dergone an enormous amount of erosion by the action 



PRINCIPLES STATED BY DOCT. H. 153 

of the ocean, the rivers, and the atmosphere. The 
ocean has worn away the solid rock in some parts of 
the world, not less than ten thousand feet in depth, 
and rivers have cut channels through the hardest strata, 
hundreds of feet deep and several miles long ; both of 
which effects demand periods inconceivably long. 
[Compare this with the 11th principle.] — 14th. At a 
comparatively recent date, northern and southern 
regions have been swept over and worn down by the 
joint action of ice and water, the force in general 
having been directed towards the equator. This is 
called the drift period. — 15th. Since the drift period, 
the ocean has stood some thousands of feet above its 

present level in many countries. 16th. There is 

evidence, in regard to some parts of the world, that the 
continents are now experiencing slow vertical move- 
ments — some places sinking, and others rising. And 
hence a presumption is derived that, in early times, 
such changes may have been often repeated, and on a 
great scale. — 17. Every successive change of im- 
portance on the earth's surface appears to have been 
an improvement of its condition, adapting it to beings 
of a higher organization, and to man at last, the most 
perfect of all. — Finally. The present races of animals 
and plants on the globe are, for the most part disposed 
in groups, occupying particular districts, beyond whose 

limits the species peculiar to those provinces usually 

7* 



154 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

droop and die. The same is true, to some extent, as 
to the animals and plants found in the rocks ; though 
the much greater uniformity of climate that prevailed 
in early times, permitted organized beings to take a 
much wider range than at present ; so that the 
zoological and botanical districts were then probably 
much wider. But the general conclusion, in respect 
to living and extinct animals, is, that there must have 
been several centres of creation, from which they 
emigrated as far as their natures would allow them 
to range. 

" It would be easy to state more principles of geology 
of considerable importance ; but I have now named 
the principal ones that bear upon the subject of religion. 
A brief statement of the leading truths of theology, 
whether natural or revealed, which these principles 
affect, and on which they cast light, will give an idea 
of the subjects which I propose to discuss in these 
lectures. 

" The first point relates to the age of the world. 
For while it has been the usual interpretation of the 
Mosaic account, that the world was brought into 
existence nearly at the same time with man and the 
other existing animals, geology throws back its crea- 
tion to a period indefinitely, but immeasurably remote. 
The question is not whether man has existed on the 
globe longer than the common interpretation of Genesis 



COMMENTS ON DE. H.'s PRINCIPLES. 155 

requires — for here geology and the Bible speak the 
same language — but whether the globe itself did not 
exist long before the creation ; tha't is long before the 
six days' work, so definitely described in the Mosaic 
account ? In other words, is not this a case in which 
the discoveries of science enable us more accurately to 
understand the Scriptures ?" 

Here let us pause and enquire whether the " princi- 
ples" above recited, in so far as they conflict with the 
received and obvious interpretation of the Scriptures, 
are entitled to be called scientific principles, unques- 
tionable facts, or necessary deductions from scientific 
demonstration, or are of such authority as axioms, 
intuitions, or facts clearly manifest to observation, as 
to disprove and nullify the literal and apparent import 
of the Mosaic account, and render it necessary to re- 
ject that account altogether, or by some new inter- 
pretation, to reconcile it with the demands of geology ? 
Or whether, on the contrary, whatever in these so- 
called principles which conflicts with the received 
interpretation of Scripture, is not mere inference, 
theory, hypothesis, or conjecture, deduced, or purport- 
ing to be deduced, from the facts disclosed by geological 
research, and, as associated with the real or apparent 
facts, set forth under the designation of principles, as 
the teachings, demonstrations, or conclusions of 
geological science ? Do the admitted geological facts 



158 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

(see 6th principle), that the fossiliferous rocks, contain- 
ing animals and plants, are not less than six or seven 
miles in perpendicular thickness, that they are composed 
of hundreds of alternating layers of different kinds, and 
that all these appear to have been deposited, just as 
rocks are now forming at the bottom of lakes and seas, 
demonstrate scientifically, unequivocally, and beyond 
all question, that their deposition occupied an im- 
measurable period of time ? Is not this assumption as 
to an immense period of time having been so occupied, 
a mere inference from a prior assumption, that the 
deposition was caused by the very slow and gradual 
operation of natural causes ? Does the observed and 
admitted fact that the deposition to the alleged thick- 
ness took place, demonstrably prove that it took place 
by the alleged gradual operation, or how and by 
what agencies and instrumentalities it was effected ; 
and that there were no moral reasons for a far more 
rapid process, and for the interposition of supernatural 
agency ? Does the fact that such deposition took 
place demonstrate that the Creator and Ruler of the 
world could not possibly have caused it any more 
rapidly or by any other means than the slow operation 
of blind, insensate, physical laws ? If not, then the 
science of geology, though it conclusively exhibits the 
fact that the deposition took place, does not demonstrate 
that the operation must have occupied an immense 






COMMENTS CONTINUED. 157 

period of time, and therefore does not throw the crea- 
tion back to a point immeasurably distant. The 
science of geology discloses a stupendous fact respect- 
ing the actual structure and condition of the crust of 
the globe. The geologist imagines and assumes that 
this existing structure and condition were caused by 
the slow operation of physical causes, and thence 
infers that the globe was created at an epoch incon- 
ceivably earlier than the " six days," and thereby con- 
tradicts the plain import of the inspired account of the 
creation. The conflict is not that of his science, but 
that of his inference. The science does not and cannot 
demonstrate or exhibit any thing to render it even 
probable that the author of the inspired account, the 
Creator and Moral Governor of the world, had not moral 
reasons for his own immediate or supernatural inter- 
position to cause the admitted change in the structure 
and condition of the fossiliferous and all the sedimen- 
tary formations of the globe. And if he had such 
reasons, then there is nothing in the existing structure 
and condition of these formations inconsistent or in 
conflict with his inspired account of the work of crea- 
tion as having taken place in the six days of the Mosaic 
narrative. 

The inspired account literally and unequivocally 
asserts that in six days the Lord made heaven and 
earth, the sea, and all that in them is. It hints at 



158 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

no earlier, or other creation of lands or seas, or living 
creatures. Does the science of geology then exhibit 
the indubitable, well established fact (see principle 
8th) that there have been upon the globe previous to 
the existing races, five or more distinct periods of orga- 
nized existence ; five or more great groups of plants 
and animals, independent of each other, which have 
lived and successively passed away before the creation 
of the races that now occupy the surface, and that a 
change of climate (see 9th principle), caused the suc- 
cessive destruction of the different races ; that new 
races were created, better adapted to the altered 
condition of the globe, and that each group over- 
spread the globe during periods of such length as to 
show that vast cycles of duration must have rolled 
away, even since the earth became habitable ? Is not 
all this sheer matter of hypothesis and inference, from 
the construction which the geologists put upon the 
appearances of the fossil remains which fall under 
their observation — appearances, it may be, construed 
fancifully, or in conformity with some preconceived 
theory of a scale of being rising from the less to the 
more perfect, or of an assumed gradual improvement 
in the condition of the earth by means of the physical 
changes supposed to have been in progress. And is 
such an inference entitled to be set forth in opposition 
to the literal import of the inspired record, as a demon- 



INFERENCES NOT SCIENCE. 159 

stration of science, with the implied conclusiveness of 
a mathemetical demonstration ? Is the Inspired Word 
to be modified, explained away, or rejected, to meet 
the demands of such an inference deduced from such 
equivocal, uncertain, or merely fancied appearances ? 

In a word, is any fanciful theory or inference which 
any geologist of established reputation thinks proper 
to advance, to be of course taken as a decision or 
demonstration of science, and as such arrayed against 
the announcements of Scripture ? Is the theory which 
some geologists hold and others reject, that the whole 
matter of the earth was once in a melted state, and per- 
haps even in a gaseous state (see 10th principle), though 
allowed not to be so well established as some other 
geologic theories, still, if admitted^ is it to be taken 
by those who admit it, in proof of the incalculable 
antiquity of the globe ? Is the extinction of numerous 
species of plants and animals (see 12th principle), to 
be taken as conclusive proof that the present races did 
not exist, till after those which are extinct had passed 
away ? Does geology know for certain when or by 
what means the lost races were exterminated ? If no 
human remains have been found below the alluvial 
deposits (see 12th principle), is geology therefore enti- 
tled to infer and decide that man was created ages 
after those animals whose relics are found further 
down in the rocks ? Is this a demonstration of science, 



160 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

or is it mere conjecture ? Is the relative position of 
those fossil relics which have been discovered, a surer 
test of chronology than the narrative inspired by the 
omniscient Creator ? 

If the science of geology does not in such particulars 
as those above mentioned, exhibit unquestionable 
demonstration and indubitable evidence that the com- 
mon interpretation of the Mosaic account is not true 
and that the world was in fact created earlier by in- 
calculable ages, and that there have been successive 
creations, &c ; if geology with all its appended theo- 
ries and inferences, furnishes nothing like positive 
demonstration or conclusive facts to bring in conflict 
with the Scriptures, but only assumptions and conjec- 
tures which carry an air of plausibility and captivate 
the imagination, while supernatural interpositions and 
moral reasons and purposes are kept out of view ; then 
it may well excite our special wonder that the science 
should be brought into conflict with revelation by any 
who believe the Scriptures to be inspired. Is it not 
passing strange that the plain meaning of a record 
believed to have been dictated by the Creator and 
Uuler of the world, should be assailed and thrown into 
doubt, on the ground of a theory of the mode in which 
physical changes have taken place in the earth ? And 
is it any wonder that when a good man has adopted 
the geological inferences, and comes to urge them 



IS THE EPOCH OF CREATION REVEALED % 161 

against the received interpretation of Scripture, he 
should hesitate and feel embarrassed at every step, as 
one not sure that he is right, where he admits that 
certainty is of the utmost consequence. 

The following extracts are from Doctor Hitchcock's 
second Lecture, entitled " The Epoch of the Earth's 
Creation Unrevealed." "My simple object at this 
time is to ascertain whether the Bible fixes the time 
when the universe was created out of nothing. The 
prevalent opinion, until recently, has been that we are 
there taught that the world began to exist on the first 
of the six days of creation, or about six thousand years 
ago. Greologists, however, with one voice, declare 
that their science indicates the earth to have been 
of far higher antiquity. The question becomes, there- 
fore, of deep interest, whether the common interpreta- 
tion of the Mosaic record is correct." What a falling 
off! The science, instead of demonstrating or exhi- 
biting indubitable facts to show the earth to be of far 
higher antiquity than the six days, and thereby fur- 
nishing solid ground upon which to call the Mosaic 
record in question, only indicates the earth to have 
been of that high antiquity ; the science, excluding 
all reference to the miraculous interpositions of the 
Creator, and the moral reasons announced by him for 
such interpositions, suggests the possibility, on the 
ground of analogy in the ordinary operation of physical 



riiK EPOCH OF CREATION. 

causes, that the earth may have boon of the alleged 
high antiquity ! 

The rest of the Lecture seems to be about equally di- 
vided in its affirmative and negative suggestions con- 
oerning the great question whether the epoch of the 
earth's creation is revealed or not. After seme observa- 
tions as to " the mode in whieh the saored writers de- 
scribe natural phenomena," the style of the Old Testa- 
ment, the Scripture usage of the words < 
and a citation of the opinions of certain commentators, 
the author says : " We have only to determine whether 
the translation ot the Mosaic account o( the creation 
most ,v.:.v teaches a production of the matter o( 

the universe from nothing, or only its renovation, and 
we have decided what is taught in the original" 

" Now, there can hardly be a doubt but that Closes 
intended to teach in these passages (the first five verses 
of Grenesis) that the universe owed its origin to Jehovah, 
and not to the idols ot the heathen : and since all 
acknowledge that other parts of Scripture teach, that, 
when the world was made, it was produced out of 
nothing, why should we net conclude that the same 
truth is taught in this passage ? r'/^v cer- 
tainly will bee ■ .'" : ; indeed it is almost as 

strong as language can be to express such a meaning : 
and does not the passage look like a distinct avowal 
of this great truth, at the very commencement oi the 



COMMENTS ON GENESIS, I. 1. 163 

inspired record, in order to refute the opinion, so preva- 
lent in early times, that the world is eternal." 

In view of this quotation, it would seem most rea- 
sonable to conclude that the first five verses of Genesis 
do reveal the epooh of the production of the matter of 
the universe out of nothing. For if Moses intended in 
those verses to teach that the universe owed its origin 
to Jehovah ; if other Scriptures teach that when the 
world was made it was produced out of nothing ; and 
if the language of these verses, ending with the close 
of the first day, is almost as strong as language can 
be to express the idea of the creation of the matter of 
the universe out of nothing within the compass of those 
verses, then how can we avoid the conclusion that 
these verses reveal the epoch of the creation ? 

But when did that period transpire which ended with 
the first day? "When," asks Doct. H., "did this 
stupendous event occur ?" The creation out of nothing. 
" Does the phrase in the beginning show us when ? 
Surely not ; for no language can be more indefinite as 
to time." 

" It is contended, however, that the first verse is so 
connected with the six days' work of creation, related 
in the subsequent verses, that we must understand 
the phrase in the beginning as the commencement 
of the first day. This is the main point to be ex- 
amined in relation to the passage, and therefore 



164 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

deserves a careful consideration." Behold now the 
view taken. " If the first verse must be understood as 
a summary account of the six days' work which fol- 
lows in detail, then the beginning was the commence- 
ment of the first day, and of course only about six 
thousand years ago. But if it may be understood as 
an announcement of the act of creation at some indefi- 
nite point in past duration, then a period may have 
intervened between the first creative act and the subse- 
quent six days' work. I contend that the passage 
admits of either interpretation, without any violence 
to the language or the narration." Again, '•' I wish it to 
be distinctly understood, that I am endeavoring to show 
only, that the language of Scripture will admit of an 
indefinite interval between the first creation of matter 
and the six demiurgic days. I am willing to admit, 
at least for the sake of argument, that the common 
interpretation, which makes matter only six thousand 
years old, is the most natural. But I contend that no 
violence is done to the language by admitting the other 
interpretation. And in further proof of this position, 
I appeal to the testimony of distinguished modern 
theologians and philologists, as I have to several of the 
ancients. This point cannot, indeed, be settled by the 
authority of names," &c. 

Here then we are left in a state of total uncertainty 
as to which interpretation is true ; and, for aught that 



ADMISSION AS TO GENESIS, III. 165 



appears, are at liberty to adopt one or the other, or 
neither. We are told that the science of geology 
teaches, that is — demonstrates, for science does not 
teach what it does not demonstrate — -that the earth 
was created at an epoch immeasurably earlier than the 
six days. Then we are told that the inspired narrative 
of the six days, including the first verse as well as 
those which succeed, may mean, will bear the con- 
struction, nay, most obviously or naturally imports, 
that the matter of the earth was created out of nothing 
at the epoch of the six days. Can these alternatives 
both be true ? If not, which shall we reject ? 

Returning, for one more illustration, to the pre-inti- 
mations in the first Lecture of the subjects to be dis- 
cussed in those which follow, we read: "The intro- 
duction of death into the world, and the specific cha- 
racter of that death described in Scripture as the con- 
sequence of sin, are the next points where geology 
touches the subject of religion. Here, too, the general 
interpretation of Scripture is at variance with the facts 
of geology, which distinctly testify to the occurrence 
of death among animals, long before the existence of 
man. Shall geology here, also, be permitted to modify 
our exposition of the Bible ?" Is it so then, that the 
facts of geology indubitably show, or distinctly testify 
to the occurrence of death among animals long before 
the existence of man ? Is not this assertion a mere 



166 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

begging of the whole question ? Is not the alleged 
existence of animals long before that of man, a mere 
inference from the fact that the fossil relics of 
animals are found imbedded deep in the rocks, and 
the assumption that they were so imbedded by the 
slow operation of natural causes ? If they were 
not imbedded by that slow process, but by a super- 
natural interposition, then would the author say that 
they bear any such testimony ? Do the facts of 
geology demonstrate that they were not inhumed by 
miraculous intervention ? "Would the author for a 
moment hesitate to speak of the process by which the 
relics were buried up, as he does in his fourth Lecture 
concerning the Noachian deluge; where, after stating 
that ; ' There are reasons, both in natural history and 
the Scriptures, for supposing that the deluge may 
not have been universal over the globe, but only over 
the region inhabited by man," he proceeds — " This is 
a position of no small importance, and will therefore 
require our careful examination. And in the begin- 
ning, I wish to premise, that I assume the deluge to 
have been brought about by natural operations, or in 
conformity with the laws of nature. I feel no reluc- 
tance in admiting it to have been strictly miraculous, 
provided the narrative will allow of such a conclusion. 
But if it was miraculous, then we must give up the 
idea of philosophizing about it, and believe the 



DEATH PRIOR TO THE SIX DAYS. 167 

facts simply on the Divine testimony. For how can 
we philosophize upon an event that is brought about 
by the direct efficiency of Grod ?" Geological philoso- 
phizing upon geological facts, is good then only upon 
the supposition that the facts were caused by the 
operation of natural laws. If there was any miracle 
in their production, then the facts may be taken as 
they are and believed, simply on the testimony of in- 
spiration. Suppose then that the deluge was caused 
by the miraculous interposition of Divine power, and 
for the moral reasons assigned in the narrative, and 
that among the facts produced by that interposition, 
was that of whelming the animals not preserved in 
the ark, in the sediment of the dissolved and trans- 
ported continents, would the facts in that case, respect- 
ing the position of the relics of those animals, distinctly 
testify to the occurrence of their death long before the 
existence of man ? 



CHAPTER VII. 

The aversion of geologists to the supposition of Miracles in the produc- 
tion of geological changes — The necessity on their hypothesis of 
numerous and stupendous miracles — Reference to the theory of Doct. 
John Pye Smith, of a limited extent of the Deluge — Inexplicable facts 
of Geology — Pebbles — Coal — " Course of Creation " — Extinction of 
Races — Preposterous assumptions and inferences of geologists — Their 
omission of reference to the moral government and purposes of the 
Creator. 

Those geologists who profess to believe the Scrip- 
tures, betray a degree of anxiety not to alarm the 
prejudices of infidels by supposing any miraculous in- 
terpositions in the production of those physical results, 
which they can conceive might, in the course of illimi- 
table rounds of duration, be produced by the operation 
of physical laws. They seem to have no fear of shock- 
ing the infidel by the supposition of things absolutely 
incredible and impossible, if they are but physical 
things, and have no relations to a moral government. 
How far this policy may seem to them to be likely to 
convert the infidel, and lead him to believe in the 



MIRACLES OF TIIE MOSAIC ECONOMY. 169 

Bible and its numberless miracles, and in the moral 
government which they attest, they do not tell us ; 
but to us such a course would seem likely to confirm 
and harden the skeptic in his unbelief, and induce him 
to think that those who profess to believe the Scrip- 
tures have not, after all, any more faith in the mira- 
cles of Scriptures than they themselves have. 

"I humbly think," says Doct. Pye Smith, "that 
for the honor of God and the interests of genuine 
religion, it is our duty to protest against the practice 
of bringing in miraculous interpositions, to help out 
the exigencies of arbitrary and fanciful theories.' , 
Again : " The Scriptures abundantly show that the 
Divine Wisdom has not lavished away miracles, but, 
so far as we know, has wrought them only for the 
purpose of accrediting the claim of some one who pro- 
fessed to be the bearer of a revelation from God." 

Yet when this author was endeavoring to reconcile 
the first chapter of G-enesis with the geological theory 
of a vastly higher antiquity, he feels no difficulty in 
supposing that the creation of which Moses gives an 
account was confined to a small region of the earth ; 
and that " this region was first by atmospheric and geo- 
logical causes of previous operation under the will of 
the Almighty, brought into a condition of superficial 
ruin, or some kind of general disorder" — that is a state 

of chaos. Now this must have been a miracle if the 

8 



170 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

geological theory is true, and a miracle for another pur- 
pose than that of accrediting a prophet. For by that 
theory the geological causes had, under the will of the 
Almighty, been during myriads of millions of ages 
operating to bring the earth forward out of its prime- 
val chaos, and so to improve it as to render it fit for the 
abode of man ; and if the operation of the same causes 
under the same will now, by a reverse process, plunged 
it back into a chaotic state, it must have been by 
what we call a miracle. 

It is of the essence of a miracle to arrest, reverse, 
or supersede the operation of physical causes, and 
those causes cannot work opposite results without 
being reversed by an interposition of power superior to 
theirs, which is miraculous power. Moreover, if they 
had during innumerable ages been operating in one 
direction to improve the earth, they could not sudden- 
ly react with such force as to plunge the earth back 
into a condition of superficial ruin, general disorder, 
or chaos, without a stupendous miracle, a miracle 
adequate to undo in a moment the work of untold 
ages and cycles of duration. And here it may be 
observed in passing, as one of the long caravan of 
camels which the geologists find it convenient to 
swallow, that if the process of sedimentary formations, 
by wearing down granite rocks, had been going on in 
every region of the globe for the improvement of its 



MIRACLES OF THE MOSAIC ECONOMY, 171 

condition during those immeasurable periods of dura- 
tion, and if a particular region was then brought into 
a chaotic state, and was by the Mosaic creation re- 
modelled, made, and fitted up for man, it is utterly 
incredible, not to say impossible, that the re-adjusted 
region should afterwards present nothing in its geo- 
logical condition to distinguish it from any other 
region. That it does not, the geologists doubtless will 
admit. For if it did, they would have told us long 
ago where that remodelled and doubly improved region 
is, and read to us the inscription on its rocks, and 
shown us wherein its geological characteristics differ 
from those of other regions, and explained how it hap- 
pened that the other regions were at the dispersion 
just as well fitted to be the abode of man as that. 

But the author seems to caution us against consi- 
dering such an interposition as this, a miracle, though 
rendered necessary to help out the exigency of an 
arbitrary and fanciful theory, of the six days' work of 
creation ; by asserting that the Divine Wisdom has not 
lavished away miracles, but has, according to the 
Scriptures, wrought them only to attest the claim of 
some one professing to be inspired. Were there then 
no miracles wrought in connection with the deluge, 
the declared object and effect of which was, by the 
power of the Creator over the earth and the seas, to 
destroy the whole of the human and the inferior races 



172 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

of creatures, except the few preserved by the same 
power in the ark ? Was there no miracle in the con- 
fusion of tongues and dispersion of mankind over the 
whole face of the earth, the declared purpose of which 
was to defeat the designs of the builders of Babel ? 
Can geology account for the origin of the various 
languages, and the sudden dispersion of man to all 
parts of the earth, without a real miracle ? "Was there 
no miraele in the destruction of Sodom ? Is it com- 
mon and matter of ordinary experience, that on occa- 
sions of volcanic eruptions which overwhelm adjacent 
villages, or earthquakes which swallow up cities, or 
meteoric tempests which burst alike on animal and 
vegetable life, for the Creator himself to appear visibly 
on earth, and to forewarn his friends that an over- 
whelming catastrophe was about to happen, not by the 
ordinary operations of physical causes, but by his own 
immediate agency, and for the declared reason that 
the sin of those to be destroyed was " very grievous," 
and demanded summary retribution ? Is not the his- 
tory of the Israelites from the legation of Moses to the 
death of Joshua, an almost uninterrupted recital of 
miraculous interpositions, and unsuspended super- 
natural agency ? Were not the miracles of the pillar 
of cloud by day and of fire by night, the supply of 
manna and of water, and others, constant and ceaseless 
for forty years ? Did the supply of manna, the double 



DOCT. SMITH PRIMORDIAL ELEME1JTS. 173 

supply of it on the sixth day of each week, and omis- 
sion of it on the seventh day, the supply of quails, the 
preservation of their shoes and raiment from decay, 
the passage of the Jordan, the downfall of Jericho, 
have it for their object to attest the claims of some 
one professing to be a prophet ? 

"What can we do less than to suppose the venerable 
author above quoted to be so blinded by his views of 
the geological theories as to be grievously insensible 
to the wonders of Divine operation revealed, recorded, 
and enjoined upon our attention in the Scriptures of 
truth. He had long been a theological teacher and 
writer, and a critic of G-reek and Hebrew, of no incon- 
siderable note. Yet he lends himself to the Nebular 
hypothesis, which never having had a particle of 
evidence to sustain it, has not* any less for being ex- 
ploded by a telescope. That hypothesis he expounds 
as follows : " That Grod originally gave being to the 
primordial elements of things, the very small number 
of simple bodies," — the same, let the reader remember, 
which the first sentence of the inspired record calls the 
creation of the heavens and the earth, — " endowing each 
of those simple bodies with its own wondrous pro- 
perties. Then, that the action of those properties, in 
the ways which his wisdom ordained, and which we 
call laws, produced, and is still producing, all the 
forms and changes of organic and inorganic natures ; 



174 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

and that the series is by Him destined to proceed, in 
combinations and multiplications ever new, without 
limit of space or end of duration." That is, as else- 
where taught or implied by him, and more minutely 
described by other amateurs, the only creation of any- 
thing that ever took place, was that of the primordial 
elements of things. These, in the deep abysses of 
the past, prior, it must be presumed, to the development 
of the power of gravitation, were stored up somewhere 
in a state of igneous fluidity ; ready to be thrown of! 
piecemeal to form suns and planets to be thrust into 
their several orbits, moulded into their due forms, and 
subjected to the law of gravitation. The several 
primordial elements invested with those properties 
which we call laws, being at length combined, the 
action of those properties, or laws, began to produce 
and went on and still go, and are forever to go on pro- 
ducing " all the forms and changes of organic and 
inorganic natures." If this is not the development 
theory in all its grossness, it yet would seem to preclude 
any supernatural interposition in the production of man 
or of any other creature in the " six days," narrated by 
Moses. 

Again, Doctor Smith, to avoid the supposition of so 
many miracles as a universal deluge would have re- 
quired, comes to the conclusion that the Noachic deluge 
was local and of but limited extent, and that it occurred 



DOCT. SMITH — LOCAL DELUGE. 175 

in' the same region where the six days' creation took 
place. He objects to the universality of the deluge 
expressly, because it would, in his opinion, have re- 
quired certain particular miracles which he specifies. 
A great increase in the quantity of water he supposes 
would be necessary, and require a miracle. This 
of course would depend on the height of the mountains. 
If lofty mountains had not then been forced up, then 
perhaps no additional quantity of water was needed. 

The gathering together of animals, birds, creeping 
things, and insects from polar, tropical, and all other 
regions of the earth, to the place where the ark was 
built, would, he supposes, require " miracles more 
stupendous than any that are -recorded in Scripture." 
But if the human race had not extended itself beyond 
the boundary of the local deluge, why should the in- 
ferior races have spread themselves over the whole face 
of the globe ? The only answer is, the assumption of 
the geologists, that those races were by successive 
creations (miracles) brought into existence at different 
places, which they call centres of creation. But if 
they were, why not suppose the same of the different 
tribes of men ? By the Scripture account of the " six 
days," the lower animals and man were created at one 
time and place. If there were afterwards at other 
places creations of the lower animals, why not also of 
man ? "Who can tell ? At best, such successive 



176 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

creations would be miracles, no less than the gathering 
of specimens of animals created to one place, unless, 
indeed, those creations were merely the natural effect 
of physical laws — organic natures produced by the 
action of the inherent properties of the primordial 
elements of things, and if so, what should hinder the 
production of man by force of those properties wher- 
ever they were in operation ! And in that case what 
would be the use of a deluge unless it was universal, 
and such as to be described in the words of Scripture : 
" All the high hills that were under the whole heaven 
were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters 
prevail : and the mountains were covered. And all 
flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl and 
of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing 
that creepeth upon the earth, and every man : all in 
whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that ivas 
in the dry land died, and every living substance ivas 
destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both 
man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl 
of the heaven ; and they were destroyed from the 
earth ; and Noah only remained alive and they that 
were with him in the arkP If it be possible by a 
multiplication of affirmatives, and details concerning 
what was or what was not done, to express the idea 
of unqualified universality, it may safely be deemed 
to be expressed in these inspired statements. And if 



MIRACLES ON THE GEOLOGIC TIIEOET. 177 

the deluge was universal, and was caused, as the nar- 
rative attests, by the immediate interposition of the 
Creator and Moral Governor of the world, for moral 
reasons which are expressly announced, and which im- 
ply the necessity of its being universal, then whatever 
miracles that interposition produced, must be admitted 
and believed, or the whole narrative must be given up. 
The physical difficulties which a creature of the fallen 
race may conceive of, as to the capacity of the ark to 
hold all the animals, though expressly constructed 
under th^. divine direction for that purpose ; as to the 
provision of suitable food for them ; as to marine and 
fresh water fish livinsr in a mixture of salt and fresh 
water ; and as to the possibility of Noah and the crea- 
tures with him descending from the concealed summit 
of what is now called Mount Ararat ; these and all 
others of the same, or of any other sort, are irrelevant 
and to no purpose, and cannot, without the utmost 
impropriety, if the narrative is believed, be adduced 
in opposition to it. 

Let us now see how far the author avoids the neces- 
sity of miracles by supposing the deluge to have been 
limited to that region which at the six days' creation 
had been brought into a chaotic state, and was remo- 
delled and fitted up for the habitation of man, and which 
he supposes continued to be his place of abode up to 
the time of the deluge. In order to make that region 



178 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

the scene of an exterminating deluge of twelvemonths' 
duration, great physical changes were required in its 
geological condition. It must be suddenly sunk down 
after Noah entered the ark so as to hold in the basin 
thus formed, a sufficient quantity of water. For if 
the rain of forty days, and the waters of the ocean had 
been precipitated upon that region while at its former 
level, the waters would have flowed over adjacent 
regions, and the deluge would not have been restricted 
to its proper limits. Accordingly, the author says : — 
" If in addition to the tremendous rain, we suppose an 
elevation of the bed of the Persian and Indian seas, 
or a subsidence of the inhabited land towards the 
south, we shall have sufficient causes, in the hand of 
Almighty justice, for submerging the district, covering 
its hills, and destroying all living beings within its 
limits, except those whom Divine mercy preserved in 
the ark." Now the sinking of this region at the proper 
moment, with the ark and all the human and other 
creatures within the supposed limits, to a depth suffi- 
cient to allow the water about to be poured into the 
basin to cover the high hills of the region, and espe- 
cially if it included the mountain now called Ararat, 
with its summit of perpetual ice, would doubtless in- 
volve one or more very great miracles, such as may 
well be referred to the hand of Omnipotence, and if a 
moral reason for the operation is admitted, to the hand 



MIRACLES OF LOCAL DELUGE. 179 

of " Almighty justice." The raising of the bed of the 
Persian and Indian seas at the same moment, or shortly 
after, would be necessary in order that their waters 
might continue to run into the basin till it was full. 
This would require one or more important miracles. 
Then a miracle would be required to prevent those 
elevated seas from running off laterally and submerg- 
ing other regions of the earth. When the deluge had 
accomplished its main object, another miracle would 
be called for to elevate the submerged region to its 
former level, and another to sink the bed of the Persian 
and Indian seas again so as to receive back their 
waters. This, accordingly, the author provides for. 
" The draining off of the waters would be effected by 
the return of the bed of the seas to a lower level, or by 
the elevation of some tracts of land which would leave 
channels and slopes for the larger part of the water to 
flow back into the Indian ocean, while the lower part 
remained a great lake or an inland sea — the Caspian." 

It occurs here to observe, that should the geologists 
ever adopt a theory by which it would be important to 
discover where the fossil remains of the antediluvians 
are deposited, they might, following this account of the 
deluge, be encouraged to look for them under the 
waters of the Caspian sea, or in its neighborhood. 

Such an attempt to substitute a local for an uni- 
versal deluge, may serve to show how the mind of a 



180 TIIE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

geologist, devout and conversant with the Scriptures 
though he be, may be mystified and bewildered by 
physical studies, theories, and associations. In no 
other view is it of any significance or worthy of any 
respect. If in the Scripture narrative of an universal 
deluge, any relief in regard to the greatness or number 
of miracles were needful or desirable, this feigned 
substitute does not afford it, and in several particulars 
implies ignorance and foolishness in the inspired 
account. If the deluge was to be limited to a particu- 
lar district which comprised all the inhabitants to be 
destroyed, would it not be folly for Noah to employ 
himself a hundred and twenty years in forewarning 
the people of its approach ? Would they not feel that 
they might at a short notice migrate beyond the 
borders of that district ? "Would not some living near 
the borders have time to escape even after the rain 
began to fall ? Could he have produced in any one a 
conviction that inevitable destruction awaited him in 
case of the deluge actually happening ? And in case 
of such local deluge, where was the necessity of an. 
ark, and the miracles which it implies whether the 
deluge was local or universal ? Could not Noah, with 
a hundred and twenty. years of prescience, easily 
migrate with his family and the animals, beyond the 
foredoomed district ? 



KEMARKABLE GEOLOGIC FACTS. 181 

Geology exhibits to us many remarkable facts which 
are inexplicable on the current theory, and which we 
must be content to leave unexplained, or explain by 
referring them to supernatural agency. 

A very large proportion of the " crust" of the earth 
to the depth of ten miles or more, consists of rocks, 
clays, &c, formed of sediment precipitated in water ; 
and this vast aggregate of sedimentary matter is dis- 
tributed into thirty or more distinct layers, differing 
from each other in their mineral composition. 

The distribution of homogeneous mineral matter 
into the respective layers is, from the nature of the 
resulting combination, ascribed to chemical action ; 
and it necessarily supposes the presence at the forma- 
tion of the respective layers, of the entire mass of 
diverse materials out of which, by chemical action, the 
materials of each particular layer were selected, or 
else it supposes that the rocks from which, by the 
geological theory, the sediment was slowly derived, 
yielded during the formation of the successive layers, 
only such mineral matter as the layers respectively in 
their order required. During the vast period there- 
fore, on this latter supposition, occupied in the forma- 
tion of the lowest sedimentary rock, which rests on 
the original granite platform, the granite from which 
the materials were derived by trituration, yielded only 
that sort of mineral matter which composes gneiss. 



1S2 THE EPOCH OP CREATION. 

Above this, not to mention less important layers, are 
that of the primitive limestone, a thousand feet or mor i 
in thickness ; the old red sandstone several thousanu 
feet in thickness ; chalk a thousand or more feet thick ; 
during the formation of which, respectively, the original 
unstratified granite rock, the source of sedimentary 
materials, must have yielded only such mineral mat- 
ter as each layer while in progress required. Now, if 
this be not incredible and inconceivable, it would at 
least be difficult to state a proposition entitled to be 
so considered. For by the geologic theory of gradual 
trituration and washing down of the granite rock, each 
of these layers must have required myriads of ages ; 
and when one layer ceased, and another commenced, 
the granite must have begun to yield a different 
mineral matter from that which preceded. If it be 
said that limestone (and chalk as a carbonate of lime) 
is formed of marine shells instead of detached and 
worn down particles of granite, then, during the for- 
mation of a bed of limestone rock a thousand feet in 
thickness, the disintegration and washing down of 
granite rock must have been suspended till shells 
enough were produced and aggregated to supply the 
requisite quantity of materials. But as has been 
observed before, to suspend the alleged process of 
detaching and washing down sediment from the 
granite, would require a stupendous miracle. It 



INTEENAL HEAT DEPTH OF THE SEA. 183 

would be to suspend the laws of nature over the whole 
or a large portion of the earth. 



It is supposed by the geologists generally, that the 
interior of the globe — below the crust, which some 
think may be thirty, and others more than thirty miles 
thick — is a mass of melted matter. If such is the 
fact, since it is the nature of heat to rarify and expand 
the heated matter, one might naturally conclude that 
the interior would be proportionably lighter than the 
crust which has been condensed and hardened by cool- 
ing. Yet they teach us that as a whole, the earth is 
about five times heavier than water, and two and a 
half times heavier than common rocks. Instead there- 
fore of being more rare and expanded than the outer 
shell, the interior must be far more compact and solid. 



The mean depth of the ocean is estimated to be 
about three miles, while extensive portions of it are 
supposed to be nine or more miles in depth. The mean 
height of the land, on the contrary, probably does not 
exceed a quarter of a mile above the ocean level. The 
dry land therefore, if spread over the bottom of the 
ocean, might all be submerged to a considerable depth 
without any increase in the quantity of water. Yet 
many geologists, without knowing anything whatever 
as to the relative height of land and sea at the period 



184 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

of the deluge, object to the universality of that visita- 
tion on the ground that there was not water enough to 
make it universal. 



The geologists, in support of the theory of numerous 
centres of creation in distinct zoological and botanical 
provinces, allege that very few of the species of plants 
and animals which they contain, can long survive 
a removal out of the province where they were origin- 
ally placed, because their natures cannot long endure 
the difference of climate, food, and other changes to 
which they must be subject. Yet they inform us that 
the carcasses of tropical animals, elephants for exam- 
ple, are found in Siberia, and the remains of tropical 
plants in the coal formation of Melville Island 75° 
north latitude. 



The theory of "a scale of beings" in which the 
animals of various species are arranged in a continuous 
and unbroken series, like the links of a chain, each 
link in the ascending scale being more perfect than 
that which preceded it, till man was reached, very 
naturally furnished the groundwork, or at least a 
plausible suggestion of the notion, entertained at an 
early period of geological research, and more or less 
down to the present day, that the fossil remains of 
animals were deposited in conformity with such a 



bo alt; of beings and fossils. 185 

scale, the most imperfect being lowest down in the 
rocks, and being in regular order succeeded by more 
perfect types. From this notion and assumption, 
resulted the Lamarckian theory of development and 
the geological theory of successive creations, neither 
of which can pretend to have even a shadow of plausi- 
bility if the assumed order of succession in the fossil 
relics does not in fact exist. But the progress of obser- 
vation and research has demonstrated the non-exist- 
ence of any such succession. Not only is it demon- 
strated that the fishes and other faunas and the floras 
of the lowest fossiliferous rocks are as complicated 
and finished in their structure, and otherwise as perfect 
as those of any superior group, or those of the present 
day, but also that the pretended products of successive 
creations, instead of being deposited in a series 
separately from each other, are mingled together to 
such an extent as to take away all support from this 
source, to the hypothesis of the extinction of species 
successively to make room for the creation of new 
ones. [See Doct. Anderson's work.] 

Pebbles. — From the generally rounded form of peb- 
bles, the geologists treat of them as fragments of rocks, 
which acquired their globular shape and their smooth- 
ness of surface by being rolled in currents of water. 
Assuming this to be the process, it is obvious to infer 
from their hardness, the polish which they bear, and 



186 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

the positions in which they are found, that vast periods 
of time must have been occupied, and an immense 
amount of friction expended, in their formation. But 
there are many and very grave objections to the sup- 
position of their having been formed in this manner. 
An examination of a bed of gravel and pebbles, from 
a half inch to three or four inches in diameter, will 
exhibit such a variety in their forms and their mineral 
composition, as forcibly to suggest the impossibility of 
their having originally consisted of fragments of rocks, 
and of their having attained their forms by the friction 
of rolling in water. The extreme hardness of most of 
them precludes the supposition that rocks equally hard 
had been so broken up as to supply the requisite frag- 
ments. No known natural process would ever accom- 
plish such a result ; and if the fragments were 
provided, no conceivable amount of rolling and friction 
against each other, without an extreme vertical pres- 
sure, and a motive power far exceeding that of cur- 
rents of water, would ever wear off their angles and 
give them their rounded form. Can any one imagine 
that masses of flint- rock were ever so broken into 
fragments as to supply the rounded nodules of that 
mineral ; or that rocks of the garnet or topaz family, 
or any of those of the most simple and homogeneous 
composition, and of the greatest specific gravity, were 
ever subjected to such a process ; or that if they were 



GEOLOGIC THEORY OF PEBBLES. 187 

they would ever acquire a globular form by trituration 
in water ? Suppose a triangular, flat, or otherwise 
irregularly shaped fragment of flint-rock to be thrown 
into a rapid current of water on a rock bottom, or that 
masses of such fragments were subjected to the action 
of currents violent enough to drift them, would they 
roll ? An experiment would probably convince any 
one that they must first be rounded before a tardy or 
a rapid current of water would give them a rotary 
motion. 

To sustain the popular theory, it would be requisite 
to show that in chemical or mechanical composition 
the pebbles are like the rocks from which the supposed 
fragments were derived. But those fragments were 
not granite. In their chemical or mechanical struc- 
ture they are not like granite, or if any of them are, 
they are but exceptions to a general rule. If the peb- 
bles were formed by rounding the fragments of pre- 
existing rocks, they must have been such sedimentary 
rocks as their mineral composition in some respects 
resembles. The pebbles, however, especially the hard- 
est, heaviest, smoothest, and most regularly shaped, 
are not in their structure sedimentary , but either 
crystallized, or their ingredients are mechanically com- 
bined otherwise than in sedimentary rocks. In gene- 
ral, they exhibit the appearance of having been chemi- 
cally or mechanically formed in the beds which they 



188 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

now occupy, after the mineral matter of which they 
consist had been accumulated in those beds ; and their 
position, in relation to the clay, sand, chalk, or other 
materials by which they are surrounded, cannot be 
satisfactorily accounted for on any other supposition. 
They are aggregations of quartz, feldspar, mica, or other 
simple homogeneous matter, chemically and mechani- 
cally separated from the earthy mass around them ; 
and owing their spherical, oblong, prismatic, or other 
forms and their smooth surfaces, to the same laws to 
which diamonds and other crystals owe their peculiar 
forms and polished sides. Flint pebbles abound in 
chalk-beds, where they could scarcely have been depo- 
sited by currents of water ; for when, if ever, they 
were diffused and deposited in their present state at all 
levels, the chalk must have been in so soft and mov- 
able a condition as to offer no resistance to such cur- 
rents. Moreover, they, like many other pebbles in 
wholly different situations, when broken often exhibit 
at the centre a nucleus of the aggregation, which can- 
not be supposed to have existed in the centre of broken 
fragments of pre-existing rocks, rounded by attrition, 
and then floated to their permanent position as pebbles. 
The theory of rounding by attrition is incompatible 
with the variety of forms of the existing pebbles. 
Many of them are thin, with two flat and smooth sur- 
faces, and a circular, elliptical, or other regular cur- 



PEBBLES NOT FOEMED EY EOLLLBTG. 189 

vilinear periphery. No one surely can imagine that 
such forms, equally polished throughout, could be 
produced by rolling, or any other possible motion in 
water. Many of them likewise are oblong, egg-shaped, 
and differing in every conceivable degree from exact 
spheres, and yet equally smooth on every portion of 
their surface. In numerous instances those which are 
extremely hard lie side by side with others of no more 
solidity than indurated clay or soft red sandstone, 
which, if subjected to such action of water as would 
abrade and change the forms of the harder specimens, 
would be instantly destroyed. And again, in the same 
gravel-bed, and in immediate contact with each other, 
are scores of pebbles differing in their mineral compo- 
sition as widely as pure silex differs from mica or any 
compounded mineral. 

These and other obvious difficulties attending the 
prevalent theory, besides those which relate to the 
transportation and deposition of the rounded pebbles 
to the positions which they occupy in loose gravel-beds, 
and in conglomerate rocks, and breccias, are avoided 
by the supposition of their having been formed by 
chemical and mechanical forces of comminuted sedi- 
mentary matter in the beds in which they now exist. 
And why should they not owe their consolidation, the 
ingredients of which they respectively consist, their 
peculiar forms, and their regular and polished surfaces, 



190 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

to those forces under appropriate circumstances, as 
truly as the rocks under other circumstances from 
which, by the common theory, fragments were de- 
tached to be rounded into those forms ? or as the 
topazes, the cornelians, the sapphires, hyacinths, 
rubies, emeralds, beryls, or any of the numerous 
families of crystallized minerals ? Will not the same 
chemical affinities and mechanical combinations ac- 
count for the selection of mineral substances, the 
forms assumed, and the smooth and glass-like sur- 
faces, in the one case as well as in the other ? 

Without a more extended or minute elucidation of 
this subject, the foregoing observations may suffice to 
show that the geologic theory concerning pebbles is 
untenable ; that it involves difficulties which it cannot 
obviate ; that it is assumed, not proved ; and that no 
just inference can be deduced from it in support of 
preadamite cycles of duration. The same natural 
causes to which the geologists ascribe the formation 
of rocks in extended masses, were adequate to the 
formation of pebbles out of similar materials ; and no 
reason can be assigned why those causes should not 
have operated in the latter as well as in the former of 
these instances. 



Coal. — The following extracts concerning the coal 
formation, are taken from the recent work of John 



AliDERSON — COAL FORMATION. 191 

Anderson, D.B., of Scotland, entitled " The Course of 
Creation." [See chap. 5, Time and the Geological 
Epochs.] 

" The carboniferous class of rocks have all the 
marks of a very peculiar formation, constructed for a 
special purpose, and elaborated amidst an extraordi- 
nary state of things. Here we meet with vast accu- 
mulations of vegetable, calcareous, and metallic sub- 
stances, for which we detect no anterior preparations. 
The coming on and the outgoing of the whole coal 
series are as distinct as they are surprising. To what 
are we to compare them ? By what scale of time are 
we to adjust the terms of their growth ?" After refer- 
ring to calculations that have been made as to the rate 
of increase per annum of pure vegetable matter over 
a given area, he gives as the result. " That about six 
hundred thousand years were occupied in the produc- 
tion of the whole coal series." But this calculation 
of time proceeds upon two assumptions : 1st. That 
the volcanic and other violent forces supposed to have 
been in operation in preceding periods, were suspended 
during the period of extraordinary vegetable growths, 
so that " throughout the whole of the carboniferous 
era a state of repose seems to have universally pre- 
vailed." 2d. That "all the living productive powers 
of nature were just as violently in operation as the 
others were quiescent," and that a condition of nature 



192 TIIE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

existed, " that produced uniformity of vegetation over 
the entire surface of the globe, as the coal deposit 
everywhere manifests, and all of gigantic dimensions 
in every family of plants — the whole earth being 
covered with a flora not only of unrivalled exuberance, 
but of uniform distribution nearly on every part of its 
surface." 

Now suppose these conditions to have existed, and 
the crust of the globe to have been kept in a state of 
repose for six hundred thousand years, after the up- 
heavals, agitations, and tempests of the preceding 
ages, whence and by what means were the earthy 
materials, the rocks and shales provided, which rest 
on the coal, and are interposed between successive 
beds of that mineral ? That vast masses of those 
materials must have been universally at hand, and in 
a condition to be rapidly moved and universally dif- 
fused in water, and precipitated on the accumulated 
vegetable matter, is manifest. This the author admits, 
and cites in proof of it the frequent occurrence of 
" fossil trees in the coal measures in an upright posi- 
tion, or but little inclined to the plane of stratification. 
These are numerous," he adds, " in every coal field, 
and are often traced through several layers or beds of 
rock. The fossil trees of Craigleith and Grranton were 
about fifty feet in length, and lying at an angle of 
scarcely twenty degrees to the strata in which they 



ROCKS OVER COAL, QUICKLY FORMED. 193 

are imbedded. Their passage through the solid rock, 
therefore, cannot be estimated at less than fifteen to 
twenty feet, that is, a mass of sandstone of corresponding 
depth must have been formed during the comparatively 
short period that trees of lofty stature were able to 
resist the destroying action of the elements, to say 
nothing of the chances of currents, hurricanes, and 
other agents, breaking them in pieces. This instantia, 
cruets may be extended to every sandstone bed of the 
formation, and thus serve to exercise a salutary 
restraint upon the mind in its imaginary conceptions 
of the enormous periods of time required for the accu- 
mulation of the whole series." 

But though this author is thus convinced that the 
process of sedimentary deposit must, in the case 
referred to, have been very rapid, if not instantaneous, 
universally, he suggests no resource of sedimentary 
matter universally present to be thus quickly depo- 
sited, no mode in which it could be universally and 
rapidly diffused in water, no means by which only 
homogeneous materials should be furnished, nor any 
evidence that successive coal-beds were formed by suc- 
cessive vegetable growths on the successive overlying 
beds of rock. The whole process, as conceived of by 
him, may safely be pronounced impossible. From the 
universality and simultaneousness of the formation, 
as represented by him, it follows that the vegetable 

9 



194 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

growths occurred within the areas which they now 
occupy in the form of coal. They could not have been 
transported from a distance without precluding so 
general a deposit of coal. The successive layers could 
not have been produced by growths on the rocks on 
which they now rest, for those rocks exhibit no traces 
of soil between their surfaces and the coal itself. 
During the progress of those growths the area which 
they occupied could not have been overflowed with 
water ; and when advanced to maturity, nothing short 
of an universal deluge would account for their being 
simultaneously submerged and covered with sediment. 

The assumed period of repose is not sufficient to 
account for any item of the whole process, unless it 
be the supposed universal exuberance of vegetation ; 
and that would imply a state of the earth altogether 
more perfect than it has exhibited at any more recent 
period, or does at present, and which at least is not 
very likely to have been interposed between the pre- 
viously unbroken series of convulsions, and the ensu- 
ing period, of which the author says : " The carboni- 
ferous period was immediately succeeded by a period 
of great violence and of vast disturbance in the solid 
crust of the earth. Hence the broken, inclined posi- 
tion of the coal strata," &c. 

Many at least of the insurmountable difficulties of 
this theory may be avoided by supposing that no pre- 



GEOLOGIC DIFFICULTIES. 195 

ceding ages of convulsion took place ; that the earth 
was created with a surface not of barren rocks, morass- 
es, and sandy deserts, but complete and perfect in all 
its adaptations, and universally prepared to be spon- 
taneously and most exuberantly prolific of vegetable 
growths ; that in the course of 1600 years it became 
stocked with a sufficient quantity of such growths to 
supply all the vegetable deposits of the coal measures ; 
that in consequence of the apostasy and wickedness of 
man it was then destroyed by the waters of the deluge, 
its animal and vegetable races submerged, and its prolific 
soil diffused in the waters, and by chemical and other 
agencies separated and distributed into homogeneous 
layers in a regular and conformable series ; that it was 
afterwards subjected to volcanic and other convulsions, 
its mountain ranges elevated and bearing upon their 
summits the sedimentary rocks by which they were 
previously overlaid, its stratified formations elsewhere 
tilted and contorted as the geologist now finds them, 
and its carboniferous, mineral, and metallic treasures, 
thereby rendered accessible to the toil of degenerate 
man, and subservient to the wants of his shortened and 
precarious life. 

For this course of things there was a moral reason ; 
a reason connected with those facts of man's early his- 
tory, his moral defection and physical degradation, of 
which, in their exhaustless hereditary virulence and 



196 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

misery, we ourselves are witnesses and monuments ; a 
reason, connected with all the subsequent dispensa- 
tions and measures of Providence and grace, down to 
the consummation and restitution of all things ; a rea- 
son, intrinsically and in all its bearings and relations, 
adequate and worthy to be announced by the Creator 
and moral governor of the universe. 

But for the other course of things — the fancied 
course of successive creations and extinctions, turbu- 
lence and repose, doing and undoing, with at best 
none but physical reasons, or rather the blind, insen- 
sate tendency and operations of physical laws, as a 
guide, what have the geologists to say for it ? Why, 
that the planet as originally created was a shapeless 
mass of discordant materials, left to be nursed up by 
the discipline of earthquakes, volcanoes, tempests, ca- 
taclysms, and successive creations, destructions, and 
re-creations, till, on reaching its present state of im- 
provement, it was fit to be inhabited by men, notwith- 
standing that the greater part of its surface still con- 
sisted of barren deserts, congealed artics and inaccessi- 
ble mountains. Countless myriads of ages having 
been occupied in this process of improvement, the 
" Course of Creation" ceased, the measure of perfection 
had been attained. The production of man was the 
climax : Some at least holding that no subsequent act 
of creation has taken place ; while others talk as 



GEOLOGIC THEOKIZING. 197 

familiarly of new creations of plants and animals, as 
new centres of creation invite them, as they talk of 
such operations in relation to the immeasurable past. 

In this course of things one gifted, practised, Chris- 
tian man, a lay-theologian, writer, and editor, of the 
Free Church of Scotland, discerns " The Foot-prints 
of the Creator " — the foot-prints of the Being of Infi- 
nite perfection, who spake and the heavens and earth 
existed, as the theatre of His moral and spiritual em- 
pire, the scene of his boundless and endless adminis- 
tration in the disclosure and manifestation of himself 
to His intelligent creatures ; and in comparison with 
whose physical works, this planet is but as a small 
particle of dust. 

Another not less gifted and Christian man, of the 
same country, a Doctor of Theology, discerns in this 
progress of things " The Course of Creation," — as if 
that glorious Being, with all His moral purposes and 
manifestations in abeyance, had employed Himself 
millions of ages in bringing this particle of dust into a 
habitable condition, though an instant volition would 
have endowed it with a completeness worthy of His 
own perfection : as if He had successively exerted in- 
numerable acts of creation, only to be nullified by 
corresponding exterminations : and at last produced 
only such a world of chaotic disorder as the geologists 
report this to be, and such a scene of life taken as a 



198 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

whole, as is barely tolerable to a fallen race ; a world 
which yet requires a physical renovation to fit it for 
the race when renovated and restored to their original 
state as moral beings. 

Of Doctor Anderson, however, whose work has been 
received only since these sheets were placed in the hands 
of the publisher, and of which, therefore, only a very 
slight inspection has been practicable, it may be proper 
to say, that he seems less under the spell of geologic 
infatuation than his contemporaries, and especially in 
respect to what he terms the millionade doctrine ; 
the untold, incalculable, and inconceivable myriads of 
millions of years, which, absurd as the supposition of 
them is, are yet absolutely indispensable to the scien- 
tific theory of geologic causation. Though he holds 
to a far higher antiquity of the earth than of man, he 
all but ridicules the excessively prodigal use of such 
terms as myriads and millions to account for what he 
deems more likely to have been produced in thousands 
or scores of thousands of years. " As to the millionade 
doctrine^ if I may so term it, there are in every view 
the greatest difficulties in the- way of its adoption — 
errors of calculation somewhere to be corrected, incon- 
sistencies to be reconciled, conditions of organic life 
gratuitously assumed and to be rectified. It matters not, 
indeed, whether we take the organic or the inorganic 
structures of the several periods as the gauge of their 



THE MILLIONADE DOCTKINE. 199 

probable duration — the living tribes that existed 
throughout such periods, and whose relative ages we 
can approximate to — or the dead rock in which the 
remains are interred. The Laws of Nature, in the 
one case, are nearly uniform ; species as well as indi- 
viduals, have their limited terms of existence ; and 
experience establishes the fact that the living tribes 
of the modern epoch have, in several instances, become 
extinct within a comparatively short period of time. 
The operations of nature in the other case are subject 
to vast diversity, great and sudden changes, and appa- 
rently limited by no ascertained maximum of develop- 
ment, and thus combined, so far as our present state 
of knowledge extends, the inference is warrantable, 
that in the geological register the error may be one of 
millions of years reckoning !" 

Nevertheless this sedate, instructed, and thoughtful 
writer is in doubt concerning the " six days." He 
speculates upon them under different aspects and with 
reference to different theories. " If any departure from 
the literal rendering of the text can be permitted, so 
as to fit in and adjust the geological phenomena, it 
may be justly contended that there is less of violence 
and straining by the substitution of periods for days, 
than by casting aside the whole genetic description as 
having no bearing whatever upon the primary cosmo- 
gony of the globe." After noticing several modes of 



200 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

reconciling the Mosaic text with the geologic phe- 
nomena, without seeming to adopt or to be satisfied 
with any of them, he says, " There is still a great deal 
to be accomplished, even with all these approximations, 
towards a right and full and literal comparison with 
the same text. It is better, infinitely better, to rest 
with unhesitating confidence in the received interpreta- 
tion of Scripture, than be borne away by sweeping 
generalizations, built most certainly somewhere upon 
loose, conflicting elements of calculation. Countless 
millions of years are, we admit, as nothing in the 
records of eternity, of no account with the Everlasting 
of days. Nevertheless, if the time can be reduced, as 
unquestionably there are data for the reduction, the 
epoch and the days approximate all the closer ; the 
speculations of the science are brought into better 
keeping with the dicta of revelation ; farther discoveries 
will lead to farther adjustments ; and what was done 
for the interests of the one by detecting the miscalcu- 
lations of Hindoo astronomy, will again be effected for 
the other by scanning more intelligibly the geological 
horoscope — and thus removing every ground of suspi- 
cion or offence will serve to brin2f this interesting 
branch of knowledge from the outer court of the 
Gentiles to the innermost shrine of the Temple of 
Truth." — Chap. 6th. 

Had it occurred to this inquisitive and candid author 



EXTINCTION OF SPECIES. 201 

• 

before he commenced his geological researches, or 
when he began the composition of his work, that all 
the leading facts of geology are far more easily and 
credibly to be accounted for by ascribing them to the 
immediate and summary interposition of the Creator 
and Moral Governor of the world by means of the 
Noachic deluge and its attendant phenomena; for the 
reason assigned for that stupendous and world-wide 
visitation ; and by the use of the materials, the mineral 
matter, the vegetation, and the animal organisms of a 
previously perfect condition of the earth, its prolific 
soils, its climates and its spontaneity; than by any 
of the theories of insensate laws with whatever liberty of 
unlimited drafts upon time, it may be presumed to be 
not improbable that he would have come to the un- 
wavering conclusion that the received literal import of 
the Mosaic record is that which the inspiring Spirit 
intended to convey. 

Extinction of Species of Plants and Animals. — 
In the fossiliferous groups of rocks are found the relics 
of various extinct species of plants and animals ; and 
it is very obvious to ask, on supposition that those spe- 
cies were created at the Mosaic epoch, and that their 
relics have since been fossilized, how and why they 
have become extinct ? The geologic theory assumes 
that they were created at successive periods, long an- 
terior to the Mosaic epoch, as the earth became fitted 
9# 



202 THE EPOCn OF CREATION. 

to be their abode, and that the products of each crea- 
tion were exterminated to give place to their success- 
ors. On that hypothesis, it would, contrary to the 
fact, be natural to expect that none of the fossilized 
species would be reproduced in succeeding, and espe- 
cially in the latest or Mosaic work of creation. If they 
were all created at the Mosaic epoch, and have since 
become extinct, the mode of their extinction may, per- 
haps, be undiscoverable by us; but the reasons for it, 
we may safely conclude to have been the same as 
those for shortening man's life, and for the various 
physical changes the earth has undergone. There 
were moral reasons for great physical changes in the 
earth and its climates, its productions and. adaptations 
in all respects to be the scene of life, at the era of the 
deluge ; as is evident from the announced and the ob- 
served results. That the extinction of many species of 
plants and animals should be among these results, is 
not less credible than that an abridgment of eighty 
or ninety per cent, of the years of man's life should be 
among them. Suppose the only creation of plants and 
animals to have been that of the " six days," and that 
specimens of every species were preserved in the ark, 
all the rest of all the species being destroyed and their 
relics buried ; and suppose that on emerging from the 
ark, the changed condition of the earth from extreme 
fertility to extreme barrenness, precluded the continued 
existence of many species of herbivorous animals, and 



CHANGE OF CLIMATES. 203 

thence precluded the continued existence of many 
of the carnivorous species ; and that those of different 
species which escaped were favored, some by the fore- 
sight and care of man, and others by climate, local 
position, peculiar habits, or other circumstances ; would 
not such a condition and course of things sufficiently 
account for the result in question, — the extinction of 
species ? Suppose again, what is neither incredible 
nor improbable, that among the changes effected in 
connection with the deluge, the polar axis of the earth 
was changed from a horizontal direction at right angles 
with the plane of the equator, to its present inclined 
direction, causing a change in the now temperate and 
frigid zones, from equatorial warmth to the perpetual 
congelation of the polar circles, and the extremes and 
vicissitudes of the more temperate latitudes. The 
considerations in favor of such a change, it is not now 
necessary to adduce. The change was as practicable, 
and in itself as likely to be effected, as that, or any of 
those, which caused terrene sterility, and abridged the 
life of man. It cannot be demonstrated that such a 
change took place, neither can the contrary be demon- 
strated. If it took place, it affords a further solution 
of the extinction of species, and throws some light on 
one of the stumbling-blocks of geology, viz. the exist- 
ence of the relics of tropical plants and animals in the 
frigid and polar regions. 



204 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

m 

"Were then, it may be asked, the extinguished spe- 
cies of animals preserved in the ark, only to perish by 
famine and by insupportable climates, on emerging 
from it ? Such a question may be fitly answered by 
another. Did man enter the ark with a constitution 
of nine hundred years' duration, and quit it only to 
propagate a diseased and puny race, a small portion 
only of whom withstand the physical evils within 
and around them, so long as seventy years ? Did 
not the tribes of giants, the sons of Anak, the deni- 
zens of Bashan and of (xath, become extinct, as well 
as the megatheriums of Zoology ? Is it not notori- 
ous, and among the things admitted and alleged by 
geologists of the greatest name. 1st, That, including 
the whole period of organized existence, the same 
genera and species of plants and animals have been 
common to the four quarters of the globe. 2d, That 
the fossil remains of plants and animals entombed from 
the beginning to the end of the pretended inconceivable 
cycles of time, are the remains only of a few great 
families. 3d, That in all the pretended new creations 
of plants and animals in the progress of the great geo- 
logic periods, no new types, no individuals even, but 
those of preceding genera and species have been pro- 
duced. 4th, That the most ancient fossil remains, 
that is, those farthest down in the rocks, of plants, in- 
sects, mollusks, fishes, reptiles, birds, and beasts, are 



ADMISSIONS OF GEOLOGISTS. 205 

as perfect in their several kinds as their survivors of 
the present day : And oth, That whole genera and 
species, as well as individuals of plants and animals, 
which survived the fossiliferous period, have become 
extinct within the modern period of physical and civil 
history ? 

That there are facte disclosed by geological research 
which, in certain relations, are utterly inexplicable to 
us, no one who has the slightest knowledge of the sub- 
ject can hesitate to acknowledge — facts which it is 
neither within the province of science nor of Scripture 
to explain. But they are, as facts relating to physical 
phenomena, not in themselves more wonderful or more 
inscrutable, than other facts which relate solely to 
moral and spiritual phenomena. A natural philoso- 
pher, excluding from his view the records of inspira- 
tion, can no more explain or account for the facts of 
the moral world, than the same philosopher, shutting 
his eyes to all but the lights of science, can explain or 
account for the facts of the physical world. The two 
sets of facts are, in original and manifold relations, 
so involved with each other, that neither can be ex- 
plained separately. The reason why the Creator gov- 
ems the physical world by a method of general laws, 
mechanical, chemical, &c, was not that such laws 
were necessary either to the existence or the govern- 
ment of physical nature. They are not properties of 



206 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

matter, for if they were, each of them would necessa- 
rily be common to all the rest. There could be no 
diversity of effects, nor indeed any changes, or any 
chemistry. The force of each property would, in rela- 
tion to the others, be the same under all conditions. 
The effect of a contact of oxygen with any other pro- 
perty would be the same as that of contact with car- 
bon. They are not of the nature of matter. They 
are but the rules and method of his efficiency ; and 
the reason of them, and of their being just what they 
are, in respect to their uniformity, universality, and 
force, lies in the high moral purposes and ends for 
which He created and governs the world. 

The assumption, which appears to have the most 
powerful and extensive influence on the minds of geo- 
logists in leading them to adopt their theory of the 
high antiquity of the globe, is that the sedimentary 
masses were formed, and their fossil relics buried, by 
the ordinary operation of the laws of matter. Physi- 
cal science exhibits to their observation no other causes. 
In reasoning about the results, they regard them as 
the only causes. They exclude from their view all 
supernatural interference. They leave out of their 
consideration the moral government of the Creator, 
and the moral reasons and purposes which He assigns 
for creating the world and interposing to change its 
physical condition. However much they may regard 



GEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS. 207 

those things in other relations, they do not belong to 
their science, or to their field of research as geologists ; 
and the whole difficulty in relation to the narratives 
inspired by the Creator, arises not from the facts of 
geology in themselves, but wholly from the restricted 
scientific view of them considered as having been 
caused by mere natural physical properties or laws, 
which the geologists take, and the inferences which 
they deduce from these views. 

Doubtless, no rational creature can behold the vast 
masses of sedimentary matter, which to a great depth 
constitute the crust of the globe, or inspect in detail 
the wonders which they exhibit, and believe at the 
same time that the whole of those masses with their 
fossil contents, were deposited by the slow, uniform, 
unaided, operation of physical laws, without inferring 
at once that the process must have occupied im- 
measurable periods of duration. But before he can 
make that inference, and as the sole ground of it, he 
must first assume that those sedimentary masses were 
formed by the physical causes and in the manner re- 
presented. Of that assumption, however, he can ad- 
duce no positive evidence whatever ; nor anything but 
an inference from the fact, that at present the opera- 
tion of those causes is slow, uniform, and unaided : 
and he therefore infers that it always was so. An 
admission that for moral reasons, a different, a super- 



208 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

natural process, may have been interposed by the 
Creator and moral governor of the world, would pre- 
clude his inference, and destroy the basis of his main 
assumption, and of the theory founded on it. 

But waiving such admission of moral reasons and 
supernatural operations, he clings to his main assump- 
tion, and makes it the basis of various other assump- 
tions involved in his theory : Such as, that if the 
formation of the sedimentary masses occupied an im- 
measurable tract of ages, their object must have been 
to improve the condition of the planet and render it 
habitable ; that the earth, therefore, must originally 
have been in a most imperfect condition ; that, accord- 
ing to the theory of some, it was in a state of igneous 
fluidity ; and according to others, that it was a shape- 
less mass of nebular matter ; that since none of these 
things could possibly be true, if the heavens, the earth, 
the sea, and all that in them is, were created, and 
created perfect in the space of six days, at the Mosaic 
epoch ; therefore, they were not created at that epoch ; 
that the first verse of Genesis, therefore, does not be- 
long to the narrative of the six days ; that the work 
of those six days was not a creation, but a special fit- 
ting up of the whole or a part of the earth ; that the 
Sabbath, therefore, was not instituted as a sign, memo- 
rial, or periodical public acknowledgment and attesta- 
tion that in six days the Jehovah made the heavens 



OPPOSITION TO GEOLOGIC THEOPJE8. 209 

and earth, the sea and all that in them is, but was in- 
stituted for some other purpose. 

None of these assumptions admit of any positive 
evidence, whether taken separately or collectively ; and 
they are, one and all, utterly baseless and preposte- 
rous, unless the main assumption at their head is un- 
equivocally admitted. 

We are entitled, therefore, when told that the science 
of geology is in conflict with revelation, to deny it, 
and to reply, that it is not the science, its facts, 
or any legitimate inductions from them, but only 
the gratuitous assumptions of the geologists that 
are in such conflict. It would be as legitimate 
to infer, as some do, from the facts of geology, 
that the earth was eternal, as to infer that the 
physical laws or properties of matter, were ex- 
clusively the cause of those facts. 

The geologists, while they take the liberty to 
make quite free with the text of Scripture, and with 
its miracles, as appears from the specimens of their 
expositions heretofore quoted, — complain loudly of 
those who call their theories in question, on the 
ground that they are not practical geologists, and, 
therefore, cannot be qualified to perform the of- 
fice of objectors : as if a practical knowledge of 
facts and details which they do not dispute, would 
be of any use to enable them to controvert what they 



210 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

do dispute. They are especially impatient of theolo- 
gical assailants, for reasoning from a non-geolo- 
gical book, and arraying moral facts and revealed 
doctrines against their hypothetical inferences. They 
forget that the doctrines of Revelation, and the in- 
ferences deduced from the facts of the moral world, 
are far more certain, and of far higher authority 
than the theories inferred from the phenomena of 
the physical world. And they likewise seem to 
forget that in so far as there are known and 
adequate moral reasons for any physical phenome- 
na, diverse from the geologic reasons, the bearing 
of those moral reasons may be urged with as 
much propriety by one who has not, as by one 
who has devoted his life to the study of geolo- 
gy. It is not against geological facts that such 
opposition will array itself, but only against pre- 
posterous, unscientific, and unscriptnral assumptions 
and inferences from those facts. The facts are not 
denied or doubted. It is the causes of the facts, or the 
mode and object of their causation, that challenges en- 
quiry and dissent. Were the geologists content with 
what strictly belongs to their science, the study and 
arrangement of geologic facts with their observed con- 
nections and relations, no one would have cause to find 
fault with them, or to diminish aught from the admi- 
ration due to their mental and physical labors, their 



GEOLOGIC PRETENSIONS. 211 

diligence, their perseverance, their achievements, and 
their fame. 

But geology is not everything. It has comparatively 
but a narrow and limited province. Its progress as a 
science has been abundantly rapid ; but it is not yet 
old or mature enough to assume to sway its fossil 
trident over the realms of matter, and also over the 
domains of life, and the empire of moral and spiritual 
natures, causes, agencies, and events. Other subjects 
and provinces of knowledge there are, which have 
been longer studied and are better settled than geolo- 
gy can claim to be ; and which are not to be uncere- 
moniously motioned aside, and treated as old wives' 
fables, by that young aspirant, armed though he be 
with fossil bones, and shielded by the mask of a pre- 
ternatural antiquity. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

The Theory of the Creation, at first, of only the Primordial Elements of 

things, considered. 

At present it is a favorite notion with many geolo- 
gists which they employ in aid of their hypothesis con- 
cerning the remote epoch of creation, that only the 
primordial elements of matter were at first prod need. 
The creation of the heavens and earth announced in the 
first verse of Genesis, they suppose to have been a crea- 
tion only of those elements, and since those elements 
cannot act each separately upon itself, nor any two of 
them upon each other until they are brought into contact, 
their existence separately at first, would form a very 
suitable starting point of a theory of changes, develop- 
ments, progress, and improvement, when they were 
brought into the necessary contact and relations, as the 
moulding of the earth into an oblate spheroid, the 
formation of its crust and the subsequent provision 
and arrangement of its sedimentary matter, gave occa- 
sion. That all this progress and these changes, should 
be the result of the chemical properties originally in- 



CREATION OF SIMPLE ELEMENTS. 213 

herent, though dormant, in the separate elements ; 
and that the physical world as it now is, has in this 
manner come to be what it is, seems to many to be a 
very beautiful notion, and worthy to excite our special 
wonder and admiration at the works of nature. Those 
elements are now everywhere combined in the physical 
substances within our observation. But chemistry 
shows us that they may be separated and resolved into 
their single and dormant condition as elements ; and 
hence the most simple idea of a creation is that of a 
production of these elements uncombined. And this 
idea is thought to be philosophical ; it being assumed 
that when combined or brought into contact in their 
proper relations, they would operate all the results 
exhibited in the phenomena of the earth. 

Whether any chemical process has as yet reached 
the last analysis of any one of those elements, no one 
can tell. If not, the heavens and the earth may at 
first, according to this hypothesis, have consisted only 
of gases a thousand times more subtle than any hith- 
erto detected ; and by the same rule, the more subtle, 
the more simple the idea of their creation. How they 
first began to come into contact so as to act upon each 
other and set on foot the career of improvement, the 
theory does not explain. But it is easy to imagine 
that a vast length of time would be required to bring 
the earth into a solid, ponderable, and useful form. 



214 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

If this was the mode of creation, and all organic 
and inorganic natures are the products of this chemis- 
try, then when we read in the narrative of the " six 
days" that the Creator said "Let there be light, and 
there was light" we are to understand that these pri- 
mordial elements, having been created long before, were 
now brought into contact, co-action, or combination so 
as to constitute light. And where it is said, " That Grod 
created great whales and every living creature that 
moveth in the waters — and every winged fowl after his 
kind — and made the beast of the earth after his kind, 
and cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing 
after his kind — and created man in his own imasre — 
and made every plant of the field before it was in the 
earth — and in the day that the Lord Grod made the 
earth and the heavens ;" we must understand that he 
created the primordial elements of those organic 
natures at the indefinitely remote epoch prior to the 
six days which is assumed to be referred to in the first 
verse. From that epoch they existed in thesi_. The 
great laboratory of elements having in the mean time 
condensed and moulded the planet into its globular 
form and generated tempests from above and beneath, 
to change, distort, and improve, and fit it up for such 
creatures, they accordingly in the " six days" of Moses 
burst forth into life. Simple, beautiful process of 
Nature ; requiring no perplexing references to moral 



HOW WERE THE ELEMENTS COMBINED ? 215 

natures, reasons, purposes, or government ; requiring 
no providence but that of the general laws, properties, 
or tendencies inherent in the primary elements, and 
worthy to be the invention of fallen man. 

Now let it be considered that these primordial 
elements, supposing them to have been created sepa- 
rately or uncombined, could not by the laws which 
science recognizes as governing them, produce any 
mechanical or chemical action upon each other, or 
operate any results whatever, except as those of them 
which were capable of mechanical combination, or had 
a chemical affinity for each other, were brought into 
contact under certain conditions. 

If they were created separately and uncombined, 
then they might have continued to exist separately, 
and have maintained in their dormant state the same 
proportions of quantity to each other which they now 
possess. 

In that case when they began to come into contact, 
and to act on each other, what was it that determined 
the proportions in which they should unite ? Not 
the laws themselves by which they mechanically 
or chemically combine when brought together. It is 
the province of those laws merely to work the effect of 
contact, not to regulate the proportions or quantities 
of elements coming together. All beyond the mere 



216 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

physical effect of contact must be owing to an extra-' 
neons cause. 

In the composition of the atmosphere, for example, 
how happens it that oxygen and nitrogen are united in 
the proportions of twenty-one to seventy-nine ? Science 
can show that in respect to their relative quantities, 
these proportions exist on the highest mountains as well 
as near the earth, but it is not in the laws which 
govern these elements to determine these or any other 
proportions. The two elements may be entirely separat- 
ed, and they may be united in any other proportions. 
Undoubtedly, if united in any other relative proportions 
they would not constitute an atmosphere fit for respi- 
ration, or for that chemical operation by which the life 
and growth of plants is carried on. But still the fact 
of their existing in the atmosphere in those proportions 
is in no degree due to the laws inherent in them, but 
considered in relation to those laws, is a supernatural 
fact, a miracle. The primordial elements, had they 
been created separately, and then left to themselves, 
would have remained forever separate. Left to them- 
selves, notwithstanding their inherent powers or capa- 
bilities of reciprocal action, they would never have 
united, either in right proportions or in any proportions. 
To suppose the contrary is to suppose them endowed 
with vitality and intelligence. A power as foreign and 
as superior to them as that by which they were 



DISTINCT ELEMENTARY SUBSTANCES. 217 

created, would be necessary, to bring them into those 
adjustments and relations with each other which would 
be necessary to produce such results as actually appear 
in the existing phenomena of the earth and its atmo- 
sphere. That is, a constant miracle, equal to that of 
the creation, or rather an infinite variety of constant 
miracles would be necessary to render the earth habita- 
ble and continue it so. Is it owing to a conviction of 
this that the geologists, with all their knowledge of 
chemistry, botany, zoology, mineralogy, and other 
sciences, and notwithstanding the confidence with 
which they teach us how the sedimentary masses 
were formed, and how their materials were derived 
from crystalline rocks, have none of them attempted to 
show how, either the atmosphere or the salt waters of 
the ocean, or the fresh waters of the earth were con- 
stituted of the primordial elements into which they 
are severally resolvable ? or where those primordial 
elements previously existed ? 

Experimental chemistry has distinguished about 
fifty-five elementary or undecomposed substances, or 
modifications of matter. About half of these are 
designated as metallic, and the other half as non- 
metallic. The two classes have, under appropriate cir- 
cumstances or adjustments, a chemical affinity for 
each other, which is more or less realized and notice- 
able in all instances of combination in the earth, and 
10 



218 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

in all instances of organization in plants and animals. 
There is, however, a vast inequality in the distribution 
of them. Some eight or ten of them constitute the 
bulk of the atmosphere, the earth, and all plants and 
animals. The atmosphere is made up of two of them, 
oxygen and nitrogen ; with a trace or comparatively 
small portion only of two others, carbon and hydrogen, 
the carbon being in proportion to the whole as one to 
two thousand, and the hydrogen or vapor of water 
varying in quantity with the temperature. 

These constituents of the atmosphere are mechanically 
mingled, not chemically combined. When one of the 
most, and one of the least abundant of them,* oxygen 
and hydrogen, are chemically combined they constitute 
water ; and in this form they occupy about three 
fourths of the surface of the globe. 

The solid earth is chiefly made up of the oxides of one 
non-metallic body, silicum ; and two metals, aluminium, 
and calcium the metallic base of lime. Add to these 
potassium, sodium, and iron, and we have all the known 
components of the earth which enter in considerable 
quantities into its composition. Sulphur, magnesium, 
and some others exist in local deposits here and there ; 
while a large number of the elementary bodies are to 
be found only in rare minerals, or so sparsely diffused 
as barely to be detected. 

In the organic world, the four elements which con- 



MIXTURE OF ELEMENTS— HOW CAUSED? 219 

stitute the atmosphere, are the principal ; besides 
which there is a minute proportion of phosphorus and 
of sulphur, and a still less proportion of two or three 
alkalies and earthy salts ; the combination of the 
whole being chemical. 

Substances possessing properties of the most diverse 
and opposite kind, are made up of the same elementary 
materials ; as sugar and vinegar, for example, from 
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, slightly differing in the 
proportions in which they are combined. Bread is 
nutritious and healthful, owing to a combination in 
due proportions of the same elements, which, combined 
in other proportions, produce the poisonous juice of the 
poppy. The slightest difference in the relative propor- 
tions of the elements of which such compounds consist, 
may occasion widely various results. 

Suppose then the primordial elements to have been 
created separately, and ready for the operation 
of the laws mechanical and chemical, which govern 
their various mixtures and combinations. It is palpa- 
ble that those laws do not in any degree control the 
circumstances or conditions under which they shall be 
adjusted to each other so as to unite mechanically or 
chemically, nor the proportions of different elements 
which shall under any given circumstances be brought 
into the requisite contact or relation. If brought into 
the necessary relation by gravitation or motion, or by 



220 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

any physical cause, their proportions of quantity to 
each other would still be undetermined and uncon- 
trolled. 

In the atmosphere, for instance, the due composition 
of which in respect to the relative proportions of its 
elements, is equally essential to the existence of plants 
and animals ; a different relative quantity of the 
respective elements, or a different mode of mixture, 
would have been fatal. Had the whole quantity of 
the respective elements been the same as now, yet if the 
relatively small quantity of carbonic acid had not been 
equally diffused, the result would not have been such 
an atmosphere as we now possess. The two leading 
elements, oxygen and nitrogen, are specifically lighter 
than carbon, and had gravitation controlled the position 
of the latter element in its relation to the others, 
it would have formed a stratum by itself, of 
poisonous, irrespirable gas, on the surface of the earth, 
to the height of about thirteen feet. Again, nitrogen 
is lighter than oxygen, and had gravitation decided 
the position of the latter, it would have formed a 
stratum of irrespirable and inflammable gas about two 
miles in depth over the carbon. 

The theory, therefore, does not provide for such 
results, or such a state of things as actually exists in 
the atmosphere, or in any other department of physical 
nature. It does not provide for the due proportionate 



COMPOSITION OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 221 

adjustment of the primordial elements, supposing them 
to have been created separately, nor for the continu- 
ance or permanence of any combination, whether in 
the atmosphere or the earth, when formed. It needs 
to a far greater extent than the Scripture doctrine of 
the creation of the heavens and earth in a perfect 
state, the constant agency of the Creator in respect to 
every department, every item, and every condition of 
his physical works. For in the one case the requisite 
proportions and combinations were established and 
perfected at the outset, while in the other they were 
left to occupy incalculable periods of duration. In 
order to the production of such results as exist in the 
composition of the atmosphere, the earth, and the 
organized forms of existence, there must be a perfect 
adaptation and adjustment to each other, of the re- 
quisite elements in respect to their properties and 
quantities, and in the relation of the bodies constituted, 
in respect to both space and time. And the perfections 
of the Creator, as exhibited in his works of creation, 
surely require us to regard those works in the perfect 
adjustments and combinations which pervade the 
realms of nature and give stability and beauty to the 
material and visible universe, and render it suitable to 
be the scene of his moral administration, and of the 
agency of his rational and accountable creatures. 
This theory of primordial elements, and of the pro- 



222 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

duction from them, by the operation of their laws, " of 
all the forms and changes of organic and inorganic 
nature," past, present, and future, as promulgated in 
this age of chemical science, is puerile and contempti- 
ble, compared with the fortuitous combination of 
atoms or elements conceived of by a Grecian sage more 
than two thousand years ago ; or with the quality of 
circular motion imagined by Des Cartes before the 
laws of chemistry were known to be inherent in the 
particles of matter, and productive of the phenomena 
of the physical world. 

In presence of this theory of elements, what has 
heretofore been called natural theology, must resign 
its pretensions. For on this theory the argument of 
design must be restricted to what takes place in the 
laboratory of nature. If there was any design in 
creating elements with certain properties the operation 
of which we call laws, then, so far as any inferences 
from the results can be made on this theory, the design 
was limited to that operation. For the properties in 
question can operate only in certain fixed and unalter- 
able modes, and can only produce certain fixed and 
uniform results ; when they have combined and operated 
their work is done and their power exhausted. Cer- 
tain physical changes have been produced, by certain 
physical causes ; all which might just as well happen 
if nothing more was to follow, (and according to the 



LIMITED SPHERE OF CHEMISTRY. 223 

theory in question, nothing more did follow for myriads 
of ages) as if an endless series of other things of other 
natures were to be produced by other causes. And if 
the causes of geological phenomena which science ob- 
serves, exist in the elements of matter, and the results 
are ascribed to the operations of those causes, science 
will reject the supposition of any other cause, physical 
or Divine, as unnecessary and unphilosophical ; and 
on that theory natural theology can make no inference 
in relation to a supreme, intelligent, first cause. It 
may be condescendingly admitted that the primordial 
elements may have been created by such a first cause ; 
but the theory is quite as complete without, as with 
such admission. All that the theory requires is, the 
fact that such simple elements exist ; that in certain 
conditions and relations they will operate ; and that 
their operation, time enough being granted, will pro- 
duce the physical phenomena which the geologist ob- 
serves. Many, however, adopt this theory, who would, 
be shocked at the idea of their being thought deficient 
of reverence for the Creator, or for the revelation He 
has made. 

How different would be the conclusion, if arguing 
without any reference to what is revealed in the Scrip- 
tures, we first assumed that there is an infinite, self- 
existent Being, possessed of all possible perfections ; 
that He is the Creator of this and of all worlds and 



-L I THE Kl ION. 

'. .• . \ ■ . " - fWS 

world a? a stage , - 

. . . s. the ;■-■:.:::.. .ens o :' ll;s gv . ■ >s : 
listra; - s n ot" His moral c.nT.-.r;.;^:;:, the e\h 
. . . - v .s eo and graee : An 

abs* .... \ . am: ae; oag aoeording to His 

[lis works, of whatever desc 
oossanly bo perfeet m the i k ads. mol .... 
their severe.! natures : Shoi 

e:' course anol \ '::. sitat . n tb. 1: since the 

globe as a seene e:' sueh administration, wo:: 
tor fit its 

moms 

US do changes in s: perfeo- 

s elements .- sepa- 

rate state, so as to - se - i i- 

.> to combine n the des 

dil Ml -•:" .0 : — sfc 

tha as ere .Ken 1 was c 

eletuents in .: per feet s:e e o:' e. .' \\\ 

not a contrary supposition grossl; 
of the pert'c ,-os e; 

And if, on ex 
beneath the surface, teeming with evidences 
its materials confused Mid distorted like a iss 
■ ins. us .1 house of relies . 



GEOLOGIC THEORIES ABSURD. 225 

natures, should we not with equal confidence infer, 
that these phenomena had been caused subsequently 
to its creation and its primeval state of perfection ? — 
And that they had been caused for reasons not founded 
in the nature or the original condition and purpose of 
the earth, but founded in some infraction or obstruc- 
tion of that purpose? And if next, we examined the 
phenomena of man as a moral and accountable agent, 
his manifest declension from a perfect state, the cor- 
ruption of his heart, the depravity of his will, his dis- 
ordered affections, his evil passions, his evil conduct, 
his debasement, his boding fears, his misery, his pains, 
sicknesses, and death, should we not conclude, that on 
account of his defection and consequently of a neces- 
sary change of his destiny, the Creator had blighted 
the earth, filled it with relics and monuments of his 
displeasure, and rendered it suitable to be the habita- 
tion of man in his fallen state ? 

Suppose now a Pythagoras or a Socrates to have 
groped his way thus far, by the lights of nature, and 
then to have been furnished with the Scriptures of the 
Old Testament, and to have received them with confi- 
dence and faith ; would he not behold there a plain, 
consistent, and ample account of the wholo matter, 
confirmatory and essentially conformable to his pre- 
vious conclusions ? Would not his reverence of the 
all-perfect Creator, withhold him from imputing to 
10* 



226 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

that Being the creation of imperfect, incomplete, in- 
congruous works, which time and change had not re- 
medied, and which no conceivable amount of physical 
changes could ever render perfect. Would he not 
say, I might as well ascribe perfection to a builder 
who without even deciding the plan, dimensions, or 
object of his mansion, should merely plant the seeds 
of trees, which, in course of time, might furnish timber 
for its frame work ; or to a treatise of philosophy 
towards the writing of which the author had proceed- 
ed no further than to select the forms of the letters of 
the language to be instituted and employed by him in 
his composition ? or to a machine, the inventor of 
which had only selected the materials to be employed 
in its construction ? And would he not recoil from 
saying with Doctor Buckland, in his Bridgewater 
Treatise: "If geology should seem to require some 
little concession from the literal interpreter of Scrip- 
ture, it may fairly be held to afford ample compensa- 
tion for this demand, by the large additions it has 
made to the evidences of natural religion ?" 

What should we think of a philosopher, who, in or- 
der to obtain a clearer, more simple, and more pro- 
found impression, of the grandeur and poetic beauty 
of Milton's " Paradise Lost," than could be derived 
from it in its existing form as a literary composition, 
—should before perusing it, request the printer to fur- 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 227 

nish him with the physical elements, the metallic let- 
ters, the vowels, the consonants, the diphthongs, the 
marks of interpunction, and all the other visible consti- 
tuents combined in the words and sentences of the 
poem, that he might judge of the work, by studying 
its primordial elements ; and from the mode in which 
he found them capable of being combined by an eupho- 
nical collocation of the types, should infer a theory of 
the mode in which the sightless poet had constructed 
his wonderful Epic : And having thus obtained what 
appeared to him to be a glimpse of the genius of 
poetry, should regard his theory of elementary, typo- 
graphical composition, as the only thing of importance 
to be contended for in relation to the origin, perfection, 
meaning, purpose, or end, of a poem ? Should we 
not conclude, that he was addled and infatuated by 
his hypothesis to such a degree, that if Milton were 
alive and should make oath that he neither proceeded 
upon the alleged theory, nor could in any way admit 
or sanction it, he would, in the sullenness of pride and 
vanity, refuse to believe him ! 



CHAP TER IX. 

jfto theory of the mode of Causation necessary to the credit of Revela- 
tion, or to our faith in it. — The possibility of the former Continents 
with their Animal and Vegetable races, having been merged and sus- 
pended in the waters of the Deluge, and transferred to the bed of the 
former seas, and there deposited in the existing strata, considered. 

Neither the credit of Revelation itself, nor the faith 
of those who believe in it, demands any such theory 
as the geologists furnish, or any other theory, or at- 
tempt to explain the mode of producing the changes 
which the phenomena of the earth exhibit. And if 
the Scriptures do not inform us of moral reasons for 
those changes we must be content to be ignorant as t© 
why, or how, they were produced. It is not in man, 
nor in science at any stage of its advancement, to ex- 
plain how they were operated, or to assign for them 
reasons worthy of the Creator whom the Scriptures 

reveal. 

But if any explanation derived from the Scriptures 



OF THE NOACHIC DELUGE. 229 

themselves were called for, a far more credible and sa- 
tisfactory one than that of the geologists, might easily 
be famished. The only catastrophe affecting the con- 
dition of the whole earth, of which the Scriptures in- 
form us, was the Noachic Deluge. For that visitation, 
however great its extent and its effects, adequate moral 
reasons are assigned. 

Now let it be considered that we are wholly igno- 
rant as to what was the condition of the materials of 
the crust of the globe originally, and at that epoch. 
For aught that we know, they may have been free 
from rock of any description, to the depth of ten miles 
or more ; the same materials which are now separated 
into different mineral beds and layers may have been 
mixed in such proportions as at once to have consti- 
tuted the most prolific soil for the growth of vegeta- 
tion and the support of animals ; and to be dissolved, 
held suspended in the waters of the deluge, and by 
chemical processes, separated, precipitated, and petri- 
fied in the mineral masses which now exist. As now 
separated, no one of those masses is, without mixture 
with others, adapted to animal or vegetable life. In 
proportion as they are duly mixed, they become pro- 
ductive. And for aught that we know, they may, 
when perfectly mixed, originally, and during the ages 
preceding the deluge, have sustained such variety and 
abundance of vegetable and animal races, as at the 



230 THE EPOCH OP CREATION. 

epoch of that visitation, to supply all the fossil remains 
which geology discovers or implies. 

This theory, if it be one, accounts for the quantity and 
the universal presence of water, necessary in the forma- 
tion of each and every one of the sedimentary deposits ; 
for the distribution and intermixture of both marine and 
terrestrial plants and animals in the successive beds 
or strata ; for the marked difference in the mineral 
composition of the different beds, which no other theory 
pretends in any degree to account for ; and finally for 
the otherwise reasonless and unaccountable changes in 
the geological condition of the earth of which there is 
such abundant and resistless evidence. 

And admitting all that the geologists tell us of the 
most imperfect of the organic races being lowest down 
in the fossiliferous beds ; what can be more obvious 
than to suppose that as the waters of the deluge rose, 
and progressively became charged with sedimentary 
matter, shell-fish should have been stifled and buried, 
before the placoids, ganoids, or other species of fish, 
fishes before reptiles, reptiles before birds, and birds 
before quadrupeds ? On this theory such order of de- 
position would be as natural and obvious, as it is ne- 
cessary to the latest geologic hypothesis. And if there 
are particular facts which this theory will not explain, 
they are facts which are explainable upon no theory 
yet promulgated. 



SUCCESSION OF FOSSILS. 231 

The principal geological writers exhibit to us tabu- 
lar charts, classifying and noting the distribution of 
the fossil relics of plants and animals as hitherto dis- 
covered in the successive sedimentary formations from 
the lowest to the highest. Taking that of Professor 
Hitchcock as an example, we find in the lowest fossili- 
ferous group, comprising the Cambrian and the silurian 
rocks, marine shells, molluscous, radiated, and arti- 
culated animals, and fishes ; and various plants both 
terrestrial and marine. 

In the next, the carboniferous group, the same variety 
of plants, with the addition of pines, palms, and others ; 
and of animals, with the addition of fresh- water shells, 
insects, reptiles, and some species of fishes. 

In the next, the red sandstone group, while the 
variety prevailing lower down seems diminished, there 
is an addition to the preceding lists of birds, tortoises, 
several of the largest species of reptiles, and of fishes, 
and some species of plants. 

In the succeeding groups, the oolite, the cretaceous, 
and the tertiary, very numerous marine and terrestrial 
plants and animals are found ; the land animals pre- 
vailing chiefly in the tertiary formation, towards the 
superior portion of which the deer, the horse, the ox, 
the elephant, mastodon, and other of the largest spe- 
cies of quadrupeds occur ; of marine animals, the dol- 



232 THE EPOCH OP CREATION. 

phin, seal, walrus, and others ; and of birds the peli- 
can, buzzard, lark, duck, and others. 

Such lists or classifications are doubtless imperfect, 
and may be subject to revision and improvement by 
further discoveries. Still from the occurrence and 
seeming prevalence for the most part of the least per- 
fect classes of animals in the lowest fossiliferous for- 
mations, the more perfect higher up, and the most 
perfect, especially of land animals in the highest 
portions, the geologists deduce very important infer- 
ences : Such as, that prior to the first inhumation of 
animal remains, the planet was in so imperfect a con- 
dition as to preclude the existence of animal life ; that 
when by geological changes, the washing down of rocks, 
and diffusion of sediment, it was so far improved as to 
admit of organized existences, those animals were 
created whose relics were first inhumed ; that these, 
and all their successors, were buried by the gradual 
deposit of sedimentary matter ; that from period to 
period as the earth was improved in its condition, new 
and superior races of plants and animals were created, 
and each in turn deposited and fossilized. 

These inferences depend wholly and absolutely upon 
the assumption that the sedimentary beds were formed 
by the almost imperceptibly slow aggregation of mat- 
ter derived from primitive rocks, and consequently that 
the fossils which are lowest down in the stratified rocks 



GEOLOGIC AND DILUVIAN PROCESSES. 233 

are the remains of plants and animals, which lived at 
the remote period when the sedimentary process had 
reached no greater height. If the sedimentary beds 
were not formed in the manner which their theory 
assumes, then the inference of successive creations of 
new and more perfect races at widely separated inter- 
vals has no foundation. The character and relative 
position of the fossil relics in the rocks, does not prove 
that the rocks themselves were formed by the sup- 
posed inconceivably slow process. It is indeed far 
more conceivable and credible that the same relics 
should be fixed in the same positions by a rapid than 
by a slow process. 

Let the circumstances and requisite conditions in the 
two cases be considered. 

In the one case, when, according to the geologic 
theory, the deposit of sediment began, the solid sur- 
face both beneath the ocean and above the sea level 
was granite. There was no soil for the support of 
plants or animals ; and if there were any plants, in- 
sects, shell-fish, or other organized existences in the 
fresh or salt-waters, none of them are supposed to 
have been fossilized during the vast period occupied in 
the formation of the group of rocks termed non-fossili- 
ferous, which rests on the granite, since there no 
such relics have been discovered. When that group 
was completed, and the next, the Cambrian, had com- 



234 THE EPOCH OP CREATION. 

menced, various marine shells, radiated and articulated 
animals, fishes, marine plants and land plants, were 
supplied for inhumation. 

It is apparent from this list of marine fossils, as 
from other considerations, that the scene of their de- 
posit was beneath the waters of the ocean ; and from 
the reported thickness of the superimposed masses, 
this must have been at a depth of some six or seven 
miles below the surface of the sea. Of course, no 
plants or animals of any description could possibly 
subsist at that depth, nor probably at one-twentieth 
part of such a distance below the surface. Nor could 
they, without a miracle, be precipitated from near the 
surface to such a depth, or anything more than a frac- 
tional part of it. Dead fishes, radiated and articulated 
animals, and plants, it is presumed would not sink at 
all. Nor indeed is it conceivable that the finely com- 
Djinuted sedimentary matter of the successive groups 
of rocks, supposing it to have been slowly disengaged 
from the original granite, and diffused in the waters of 
the ocean, should ever slowly subside and sink down 
miles below the surface. And surely nothing can be 
more incredible, than that land plants, after being 
drifted into and widely dispersed near the surface of 
the ocean, should be precipitated to the depth of five 
or six miles, and there in the course of time be buried 
up and fossilized in a perfect state of preservation, not- 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE GEOLOGIC THEOKY. 235 

withstanding the lapse of time between their detach- 
ment from the soil, and their inhumation, and the ac- 
tion on them of river and ocean currents, and of salt, 
carbonic acid, and other corroding agents in the sea. 

It is clear that the first sedimentary deposits must 
have been made at the supposed depth of eight or ten 
miles below the * sea level ; for otherwise they could 
not have risen to the height of eight or ten miles above 
the subjacent granite. To suppose that when they 
commenced, the granite platform beneath them was 
within a moderate distance of the surface, and was 
from time to time forced down by some convulsion, 
may seem to remove one difficulty, but only by 
creating another. For on that supposition, where 
were the waters of the ocean, which though they now 
occupy about three-fourths of the surface of the globe, 
are from two or three to nine or more miles in depth ? 
From the universality of the gneiss, the lowest of the 
sedimentary rocks ; the regular succession of the beds 
and groups above it, and the necessary constancy of 
the action of the natural causes by which the granite 
rocks are supposed to have been worn down, it follows 
that the process of sedimentary formations must have 
been universally constant over the whole area occupied 
by them, and therefore if the waters of the ocean had 
been shallow enough to admit of the deposition of 
sediment, and of plants and animals, there would not 



236 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

have been room enough for them, even had they over- 
spread the entire surface of the globe. 

All the geologists agree that the stratified rocks were 
deposited from water, and therefore originally must 
have been nearly horizontal. The total thickness of 
the fossiliferous strata generally is held to be about 
seven miles, and that of the non-fossiliferous supposed 
to be three miles or more. Organic remains, relics of 
plants and animals, occur more or less in all the 
fossiliferous strata. " It is," says Professor Hitchcock, 
" a moderate estimate to say, that two-thirds of our 
existing continents are composed of fossiliferous rocks. 
This estimate," he adds, " might without exaggera- 
tion be confined to strata that contain marine relics 
which were deposited beneath the ocean." 

The fossiliferous strata, therefore (and consequently 
the non-fossiliferous beneath them), must, as has been 
before observed, have been elevated from beneath the 
ocean, after the whole process of stratification was 
completed ; for otherwise the upper stratum of the 
series with its imbedded fossils could not have been 
formed. The whole mass must have remained beneath 
the ocean, and substantially in the position in which 
the sediment was deposited, till the operation Avas 
finished. It could not, maintaining its horizontal posi- 
tion, have been gradually elevated, and yet have left 
room for the ocean water without deluging the dry 



FOSSILS ON HIGH MOUNTAINS. 237 

land and precluding the existence of land plants, and 
animals, to be inhumed in the uppermost fossiliferous 
stratum, where they chiefly occur ; nor could it at any 
stage before its completion, have been tilted up and 
distorted as it now is, without precluding the orderly 
horizontal deposition of the strata still to be formed. 

From these and other considerations, not necessary 
now to be insisted on, we are entitled to infer that the 
elevation of our present continents and their mountain 
ranges was subsequent to the deposition of the fossili- 
ferous strata, and was sudden, and occupied but a 
brief space of time. That it was violent, is shown by 
the tilted and distorted positions which in many 
localities the whole mass of sedimentary matter, from 
the lowest stratum to the highest, now exhibits ; and 
also from the height to which the mountains, capped 
with sedimentary rocks, were raised ; it being known 
that in the Alps such rocks abound with organic re- 
mains from six to eight thousand feet above the level 
of the sea ; in the Pyrenees, nearly as high ; in the 
Andes at the height of fourteen thousand feet, and on 
the Himalaya summits at a still greater altitude. That 
the elevating force must have been simultaneously 
exerted in all the regions occupied by the present con- 
tinents, is to be inferred from the unquestionable 
necessity there was of removing and sinking the former 
continents, and thereby filling the vacuum caused by 



238 THE EPOCH OP CEEATION. 

elevating new ones, and at the same time providing a 
capacious bed for the present ocean. 

That the elevatory force by which the present con- 
tinents were raised, was exerted after and within a 
limited period after the completion of the sedimentary 
strata, is further evident from the fact that the dykes 
and veins of mineral and metallic matter which rise 
from beneath to the surface, were not forced up till 
after those strata were raised, tilted, and fixed in their 
present position ; as appears from the fact that those 
dykes and veins in passing through inclined and dis- 
torted strata, pierce them not at right angles with 
their planes, but obliquely, and maintain in general a 
vertical direction which could not have happened till 
after the stratified masses had been forced up. 

The reader will now consider the facts thus briefly 
glanced at : That all the sedimentary rocks which con- 
stitute the field of geologic research and hypothesis, were 
formed beneath the waters of the ocean ; that the fos- 
siliferous groups, to the depth of about seven miles, con- 
tain both marine and terrestrial plants and animals : 
That these and the sedimentary group beneath them 
were deposited prior to their elevation above the sea level ; 
that the continents previously occupied by vegetable 
and animal races were removed or depressed at the 
same time or immediately after the present continents 
were raised ; and in view of these facts, and the infer- 



SUPPOSED EFFECTS OF THE DELUGE. 239 

ences which they justify, he will be prepared to decide 
whether it is possible that the stratified rocks were 
formed, and their fossils distributed and buried up in 
them, in the manner represented by the geological 
theory ; or whether a process like that above indicated, 
by which the whole mass of sedimentary matter was 
dissolved, intermixed with the existing plants and ani- 
mals, and held in solution in the waters of the deluge ; 
and under the influence of mechanical, chemical, gal- 
vanic, electric, and perhaps other forces, precipitated, 
distributed into beds of diverse mineral composition, 
consolidated, and subsequently elevated above the sea 
level. 

In noting the difficulties^ of the former supposition, 
it must be observed, that the present continents occupy 
the space, which prior to the sedimentary formations, 
was occupied by the ocean ; and the present ocean oc- 
cupies the field of the former continents. From those 
former continents therefore, the mass of sedimentary 
matter must have been derived, and likewise the ter- 
restrial plants and animals which are fossilized. And 
it is farther to be observed that both the marine and 
terrestrial plants and animals which are imbedded in 
the sedimentary rocks, are in general very perfectly 
preserved ; a large portion of them in the limestones 
and other solid strata, exhibiting no marks of abrasion 
or decay 



240 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

If then those former continents consisted of earths 
and soils adapted to the spontaneous and most exuber- 
ant growth of plants, and the support of every species 
of animals ; and in that state were saturated, and 
with their various vegetable and animal races, diffused 
in the waters of the deluge, and in that state of mix- 
ture transferred to the area of the former seas ; the 
conditions requisite to the sedimentary and fossil for- 
mations would be provided for ; the pervading presence 
of water the medium of deposition ; the distribution of 
diverse mineral matter into distinct beds ; the mixture 
of marine and terrestrial plants and animals in the 
lower as well as the higher groups ; and in latitudes 
and climates to which they were not indigenous ; the 
aggregation of vegetable masses in the coal measures ; 
the subsequent upheaval of the strata thus formed, to 
constitute the present continents, and the still later 
intrusion of mineral and metallic dykes and veins ; and 
the formation of a bed for the present oceans. 

Doubtless such a process was possible, and possible 
without any greater miracle than that of a universal 
deluge ; possible, consistently with the wide dispersion 
of the fossil relics, and the state of preservation in 
which they are discovered ; possible, with the mate- 
rials thus indicated, and consistently with the separa- 
tion of them into strata of different mineral composi- 
tion ; possible, consistently with the moral reasons 



DILUVIAL CHANGES POSSIBLE. 24:1 

assigned in Scripture for the deluge itself, and the results 
consequent upon it, in shortening the period of human 
life ; the necessity of toil and of arts and inventions to 
render the earth productive ; the allowance of animal 
food for the sustenance of man ; the extinction of 
many species of plants and animals, consequent on the 
sterility of the new formations ; the spontaneous 
growth of noxious in place of healthful plants ; 
the introduction of diseases, droughts, famines, 
pestilences, poverty, and oppression ; and lastly, pos- 
sible, consistently with what is prophetically foreshown 
of the purpose of the Creator, hereafter, not by a pro- 
tracted, but by a summary process, to renovate, re- 
model, and re-establish the earth in its primitive para- 
disiacal condition of fertility, healthfulness, and 
beauty. And if with these conditions such a 
process was possible, the purpose of these obser- 
vations requires no more. 

That a transfer of the superior portion of the former 
continents, with their animal tribes, to the scene of 
the sedimentary formations, should not have involved 
a coincident transfer of the human with the inferior 
races, and a mixture of their relics with the flora and 
fauna of the rocks, may have a reason in what relates 
to the resurrection, and the relation of its period to 
that of the future renovation of the earth ; or if they 
were transferred, further investigations may yet dis- 

11 



242 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

close them ; or their place of sepulture may be beyond 
the limits of geologic exploration and research. 

Supposing the deluge to have been instrumental in 
producing the great geologic changes referred to, their 
congruity with the teachings of inspiration is, in the 
most important particulars, sufficiently apparent. The 
earth, its vegetation, the inferior tribes of animals, and 
man, were created perfect in their natures, and in re- 
lation to their respective objects and destinations. The 
earth was perfectly fitted to be the perpetual abode of 
man in his primeval state of holiness and happiness. 
Man was invested with dominion over all inferior crea- 
tures. The rites and services necessary to his social 
and religious well-beins; were instituted. Vegetables 
were appointed for his sustenance. Man apostatised, 
renounced his allegiance to the Creator, forfeited the 
gifts and immunities of his previous state, was judged 
and condemned. A change in his physical condition 
and destiny wss denounced upon him, corresponding 
to the change in his moral character, relations, and 
prospects. The physical was the consequence, the le- 
gitimate and appropriate consequence, of the moral 
change. His apostacy, considered in itself, and as in- 
volving his own race in its moral, and his own with 
the inferior races, in its physical consequences, was an 
event of incomparably more importance than any 
other event which ever aiiected this world. The 



MORAL REASONS OF THE DKLTJGE. 2io 

earth, polluted by his sin, was doomed and smitten. 
The Creator said to Adam, " Cursed is the ground for 
thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days 
of thy life ; thorns also and thistles shall it bring 
forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field ; 
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou 
return into the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken ; 
for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return." 
Man was no longer permitted to subsist on the fruits 
of paradise. He was driven forth from Eden, to till 
the ground from which he was taken. 

Under this sentence for about sixteen centuries, the 
period of human life was prolonged to eight or nine 
hundred years ; the sentence being but partially exe- 
cuted. The respite was abused. " All flesh corrupted 
his way. The wickedness of man was great in the 
earth ; every imagination of the thoughts of his heart 
was only evil continually. The earth was corrupt. 
And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have 
created, from the face of the earth, both man and 
beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the 
air — the end of all flesh is come before me ; for 
the earth is rilled with violence through them ; 
and behold I will destroy them with the earth — 7, 
even I, do bring* a flood of waters upon the earth, 
to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life, 
from under Heaven : and every thing- that is in 



'2-U THE EPOCH 01 CREATION. 

earth shall die. — And every living substance was 
destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, 
both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the 
fowl of the heavens : and they were destroyed from 

the earth : and Noah only remained alive, and they 
that were with him in the ark." 

This deluge continued during twelve months and 
ten days : a period tar longer than was necessary to 
i lie destruction of animal and vegetable life, and Ions 
enough it may be assumed, considering the object 
it, and the agencies employed in effecting it, to pro* 
duee all the geological changes which can be ascribed 
to it. lr is noticeable that, vegetation having been 
destroyed. Noah continued in the ark nearly two 
months after the face of the ground was dry : within 
which time, a supply of vegetation for the animals in 
the ark, might be prod need. 

The greatness of the catastrophe, considered in its 
physical as well as its moral relations, is indicated by 
what took place after its termination. The Lord said 
— " 1 will not again cursi the ground any more for 
man's sake — neither will I again smite any more 
every thing living, as 1 have' done. While the earth 
remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and hear, 
and snmmer and winter, and day and night, shall not 
cease." For man's security and sustentation. under 
his altered and novel circumstances, the fear o( him 



RESULTS OF THE DELUGE. 245 

was impressed on all the inferior creatures, and the 
flesh of animals was allowed to him for food. His of- 
fering of sacrifices was accepted, and some important 
moral precepts were enjoined upon him. And further 
to confirm his confidence in the future exemption of 
the earth from a similar visitation, and to commemo- 
rate the wonders of the recent scene, a covenant be- 
tween the Creator and his creatures, was announeetl, 
and a token of it, visible to all creatures, was estab- 
lished, " And Grod spake unto Noah and to his sons 
with him, saying : and I, behold, I establish my cove- 
nant with you, and with your seed after you, and 
with every living creature that is with you, of the 
fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with 
you, from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of 
the earth. And Grod said, This is the token of the 
covenant which I make, between Me and you and 
every living creature that is with you, for perpetual 
generations. I do set my bow in the cloud, and it 
shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the 
earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a 
cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the 
cloud : And I will remember My covenant which is 
between Me and you and every living creature of all 
flesh; and the maters shall no more become a flood to 
destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; 
and I will look upon it, that I may remember tho 



246 THE EPOCH OF CREATION 

everlasting covenant between (rod and every living 
creature of all flesh, that is upon the earth. And 
Grod said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant 
which I have established between Me and all flesh that 
is upon the earth." 

The apostacy of man was, in its nature as a moral 
phenomenon, and in its moral and physical consequen- 
ces and relations, the most comprehensive and disas- 
trous event, of which the earth has ever been the 
scene. It involved the character and destiny of the 
whole race. As an example of revolt, renunciation of 
allegiance, alienation and antagonism, against the 
Creator and moral ruler of the universe, it bore direct 
and manifest relations to the unfallen myriads of other 
worlds. It was the rebellion of a province of the moral 
empire. It was the act of a bodied race of creatures, 
visible by their physical organizations ; and was visi- 
bly manifested by their external agency. Its nature, 
turpitude, and deserts, were therefore to be signified 
by external, physical, and visible inflictions ; decay 
and death to man's physical nature, as a concomitant 
and counterpart to the spiritual death and doom of his 
immortal soul ; and a visible confirmatory, and illus- 
trative, physical change, in his terrestrial habitation 
and condition. Hence the specification of physical 
evils in the sentence pronounced upon xldam, and the 
order in which they are recorded. Cursed is the earth 



PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF THE DELUGE. 247 

— for thy sake — henceforth in sorrow shalt thou par- 
take of its products. Thorns and thistles shall it bring 
forth to thee. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
bread till thou return to the dust. These terms denote 
vast and various physical changes ; changes suitable 
to indicate the total change in man's moral character, 
relations, and destiny ; changes proportioned in other 
respects to that stamped on his mortal prospects by 
the introduction of toil, sorrow, decay, and death. But 
the perfect rectitude of the Lawgiver and judge in 
these inflictions would not, we may suppose, have 
been so convincingly manifest to Adam and his succes- 
sors, as to induce their full recognition and acknow- 
ledgment, had they been executed immediately, or be- 
fore the desperate alienation, corruption, and wicked- 
ness of men, in their fallen state, had been manifested 
by a prolonged trial, attended by every advantage of 
outward and temporal circumstances : A respite was 
therefore permitted. The days of Adam and those of 
his immediate descendants were protracted to about 
nine hundred years ; the earth probably continuing to 
yield spontaneously its primeval fruits, till the lapse 
of 1600 years ; when the world was so filled with 
corruption aud violence as to forbid further delay, 
require an immediate and summary execution of 
the curse upon the earth, in connection with all 
but a total extinction of the race, and such changes 



248 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

in the surface, the climates, and the products of 
the globe, and such abridgement, toil, and sorrow 
of post-diluvian life as visibly and fully to com- 
port with the terms of the primeval sentence, and 
to vindicate the righteousness and the necessity 
of it, to the view of the whole universe ; and 
moreover to leave in the condition of its rocks 
and relics such tokens of the nature, occasion, and 
effects of the visitation, as should never be called in 
question, at least by any other than fallen creatures. 
This, like other extraordinary dispensations affect- 
ing the whole race, or particular nations, or commu- 
nities, was expressly declared to be the effect of 
immediate Divine interposition. It was a judicial 
visitation on the race for their apostacy and wicked- 
ness. " Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of wa- 
ters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh," &c. 
It was signalized by numerous outward and visible 
arrangements and instrumentalities, betokening the 
nature and greatness of the exigency, and adapted 
to convince all created intelligences of the pre- 
sence and righteousness of its author. That there 
was great significance in the visibility, as well 
as in the magnitude of the physical changes, con- 
sidered as the tokens or counterpart of the moral 
changes wrought by the apostacy, and rendered 
manifest by the universal corruption, and violence 



ANALOGY OF SIGNAL INFLICTIONS. 219 

which ensued ; can admit of no rational doubt, 
whether considered with relation to intelligent spec- 
tators of the scene, fallen and unfallen, or with 
relation to all subsequent observation of the physi- 
cal effects and monuments of those changes. 

The scene which from the beginning has been 
passing upon this earth, is doubtless a spectacle 
to the universe of created intelligences. From the 
beginning the rights and prerogatives of the Creator, 
as moral and providential ruler, have been questioned, 
denied, and arrogantly usurped by the fallen. Instead 
of rendering to Him the homage and obedience which 
He claims, they yield themselves to the rival system 
of idolatry, and visibly manifest the depravity of their 
hearts, by worshipping and serving creatures. On 
numerous occasions therefore, when their corruptions 
could no longer be permitted, he has come forth, 
and by local and visible interpositions and endur- 
ing effects and monuments of his righteous indig- 
nation has rebuked and confounded their impiety. 
Sometimes, as on occasion of the confusion of tongues 
and dispersion of mankind to all parts of the earth, and 
on that of the destruction of Sodom, and that of the 
destruction of the nations of Canaan, He " who was 
in the beginning and by whom all things in heaven 
and earth, were created," signalized his interposition 
by his visible presence, as if, in view of an observant 
11* 



250 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

universe, to attest and sanction by his personal appear- 
ance and inspection, the necessity and propriety of the 
visitations about to be effected by His power. Has it, 
since the audacious and idolatrous project of Nimrod 
and his confederates was defeated, been possible for 
any intelligent observer of the actual condition of the 
nations and tribes of mankind with their thousand 
variant and discordant languages, to doubt of the 
greatness and universality of the interposition which 
" scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth," 
and confounded " the language of all the earth ?" Or 
could such an observer possibly doubt of the reality, 
the far-reaching import, the sufficiency and moral ne- 
cessity of the reason assigned for the visitation which 
has left its impress as it were upon the very nature 
and the social condition of every^ nation, tribe, family, 
and individual of the race down to the present hour ? 
Would there have been anything extravagant in arguing 
from the local phenomena of the Dead Sea and the 
historical facts of its history, that it was, for the rea- 
son assigned, miraculously constituted, a perpetual 
memorial and witness of the righteous judgement of 
Grod ; or the adequacy of the reason assigned for so 
total and remediless a destruction ; even if the apostle 
Peter had not compared it to the dejection and doom 
of the angels who fell, and with the destruction of the 
earth by " bringing in the flood upon the world of the 



SCRIPTURE REFERENCES TO THE DELUGE. 251 

ungodly :" and then describing it as " a turning of 
the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemn- 
ing them with an overthrow and makinsr them an 
example," a monitor, a warning, " unto those that 
should after live ungodly?" "Set forth," saith St. 
Jude, " for an example, suffering the vengeance of 
eternal fire." 

Now if the nature and extent of the outward and 
visible results in these cases were only proportioned to 
the wickedness exhibited in these local and limited 
scenes of action, why should we hesitate to infer the 
vastness and universality of the physical changes at 
the deluge, when for their original apostacy and their 
universal wickedness, the whole race excepting Noah 
and his family were with the inferior animals to be 
whelmed in utter and indiscriminate destruction ? 

In the Psalms, and other parts of Scripture this 
visitation is alluded to as amonsr the most wondrous 
interpositions of the Ruler of the Universe. The cove- 
nant with Noah was of such significance as to be re- 
ferred to by Isaiah in confirmation of the sacredness 
and stability of the eternal covenant between (rod and 
his redeemed people. " As I have sworn that the waters 
of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I 
sworn that I would not be wroth with thee nor rebuke 
thee. For the mountains shall depart and the hills be 
removed ; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, 



252 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, 
saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." — Isaiah 54. 
The Apostle Peter contrasts the destruction of the 
earth by the deluge, with its future transformation by 
fire, indicating the universality of the physical results. 
" The world that then was, being overflowed with 
water, perished. But the heavens and earth which are 
now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved 
unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition 
of ungodly men.** 



CONCLUSION. 

Reference to the Supreme authority and importance of the Scriptures. 

If the Scriptures were given by inspiration of the 
Creator and Ruler of the "World ; if they teach what 
we are to believe concerning Him, and what duties He 
requires of us ; if they record His acts as Creator 
and Ruler, and the laws and sanctions of His moral 
government ; then they demand our highest reverence 
as bearing the signatures and sanctions of His infinite 
authority, exhibiting the nature and basis of His pre- 
rogatives and rights, and imposing upon us the most 
unrestricted and imperative obligations. If in our 
degeneracy and blindness we do not understand and 
comprehend all that they teach, it becomes us to re- 
gard them as the appointed vehicle, the ark, of the 
Divine wisdom, authority and favor to a fallen race, 
and at least to refrain from putting forth the presump- 



254 THE EPOCH OF CREATION. 

tuous hand of our physical theories to rectify or guide 
it. 

Infidelity, driven forth from the fields of metaphysics 
and philosophy, has taken refuge in the dark recesses 
and labyrinths of physical nature, where its invariable 
concomitant and counterpart, superstition, finds mys- 
teries, prodigies, paradoxes, and wonders, suited to its 
insatiable cravings. The christian man is tempted to 
follow, and to encounter the wily enemy in this am- 
bush, leaving neglected behind him the only citadel 
and tower of his strength and safety, with its muni- 
tions of defence. He ventures on the conflict with 
such weapons only as he may have in common with, 
or may obtain from the adverse party, by barter or 
concession. If, on this arena, he contends for the 
reality and divine authority of inspiration or of 
miracles, he soon, step by step, as the spell of natural- 
ism, and of his contrasted and conscious weakness 
comes over him, yields to the visible, innumerable, in- 
explicable paradoxes, mysteries, and mazes of nature, 
all that his adopted guides, the laws of physical 
science, reject as supernatural. As he descends into 
the sepulchral abysses of the earth in search of primeval 
records and revelations, the light of heaven is inter- 
cepted and soon forgotten. (See Appendix C.) 

If in respect to the moral nature, accountability, 
and destiny of man, in his relations to his? Creator, 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND INFIDELITY. 255 

Preserver, Ruler, and Redeemer, the Bible is anything, 
it is without competition or comparison, essential to 
him ; his only infallible guide, a lamp to his feet, a 
light to his path. Suited to his limited capacities, his 
dependence and his weakness, it exhibits moral reasons 
for the works of creation and providence, and leaves 
the great, and to him inscrutable mysteries of nature, 
and of the mode of the Creator's agency in originating, 
upholding, changing, and governing, all things, unex- 
plained. 

Jehovah, the Incarnate Word, is, in the theories of 
physical science, unrecognized and unacknowledged. 
"When He was visibly in the world which was made by 
Him, the world knew him not. And that He is now 
no more known or acknowledged in the systems of 
Idealism, Pantheism, and Naturalism, than in those 
of Pagan superstition and Mahommedan imposture, 
should be a warning to good men not to swerve from 
the lights of the only revelation He has vouchsafed 
and sanctioned for their guidance. A^ s ve £ the world 
at large has never acknowledged His prerogatives and 
rights as Creator and Moral Governor. But we are 
forewarned in terms fitted to arrest and fix our atten- 
tion, that in the consummation of the purposes, and 
as one of the results of his perfect administration, He 
will be recognized in the greatness and majesty of 
His person, and the glory of His attributes ; every 



256 THE EPOCH OF CEEATION. 

eye shall see Him, and every knee shall bow, and 
every tongue confess that, in contradistinction to all 
idols and all creatures, He is Jehovah, the self-exist- 
ent, the creator, upholder, ruler, and judge of all. 



APPENDIX. 



A. 

[From a vol. entitled "Geological Cosmogony," published by Robert 

Carter, 1843.] 

" The following extracts from different works on 
Geology will sufficiently indicate the views of the 
authors on the points to which they relate. 

lt As the materials of stratified rocks are in great 
degree derived directly or indirectly from those which 
are unstratified, we commence our inquiry at that 
most ancient period when there is much evidence to 
render it probable that the entire materials of the globe 
were in a fluid state, and that the cause of this fluidity 
was heat. The form of the earth being that of an 
oblate spheriod — is that which a fluid mass would 
assume from revolution around its axis. The nebular 
hypothesis offers the most simple and therefore the 
most probable theory respecting the first condition of 
the material elements that compose our solar sys- 
tem." — Buckland. 

" The nebular hypothesis in its relations to the 
planetary system may be termed complete ; it com- 



258 



APPENDIX. 



prehends its beginnings, establishes those elements on 
which its duration depends, and exhibits the causes 
and mode of its ultimate transition into a novel form ; 
and thus surveying it from its commencement to its 
close, we are as if in possession of that primeval 
Creative Thought which originated our system, and 
planned and circumscribed its destiny." "If that 
nebular hypothesis be true, all the forces developed 
upon the surface of our planet, and which have given 
rise to geological transitions, stretching through 
periods in which the existence of the human race is 
an invisible spec, will have resulted during a stage 
of condensation in a secondary nebula, which no in- 
strument from any fixed star could possibly detect." 
" Our supposed origin of the planets gave them and 
their satellites that kind of orbits, and that kind of 
rotation, which produced their permanence ; and the 
inherence of this same nebulous parentage, viz : the 
existence of an ether, leads gently to their decline." — 
Nichol, pp. 82, 106, 108. 

" The nebular hypothesis, ridiculed as it has been 
by persons whose ignorance cannot excuse their pre- 
sumption, is regarded as in a very high . degree 
probable by some of the finest and most Christian 
minds. If I may venture to utter my own impres- 
sions, I must profess it as the most reasonable suppo- 
sition, and the correllate of the nebular theory, that 
' God originally gave being to the primordial elements 



APPENDIX. 259 

of things, the very small number of simple bodies, 
endowing each with its own wondrous properties." — 
Smith. 

" The evidence of geological phenomena constrains 
us to the belief, that our earth has existed, has been 
the seat of life, and has undergone many changes of 
its surface, through periods of time utterly beyond 
human power to assign. That evidence is of distinct 
and independent kinds, chiefly derived from the ap- 
pearance of stratification and the remains of animal 
and vegetable life." — Smith. 

" The best writers abound in general expressions : 
such as ' immense periods of time — undefined, yet 
countless asres — a duration to which we dare not 
assign a boundary — a work infinitely slow — a space 
of time from the contemplation of which the mind 
shrinks — a long succession of monuments, each of 
which may have required a thousand ages for its 
elaboration — successions of events where the Ian2:ua2:e 
of nature signifies millions of years.' " — Man-tell, 
McCulloch, Sedg-ivick, and others, quoted by Smith. 

" The whole series of strata, from the earliest of 
them to the present surface of the globe, exhibits a 
body of evidence in favor of our doctrine [of antiquity]. 
Every stratum, partially excepting the limestones, 
consists of a mass of earthy matters which once formed 



260 APPENDIX. 

the substance of rocks on elevated land. Those por- 
tions of the rocks have been separated from their 
parent masses, worn down, comminuted, transported 
often to great distances by the force of water, deposited, 
consolidated and hardened." — Ibid. 

" Beneath the whole series of stratified rocks that 
appear on the surface of the globe, there probably 
exists a foundation of unstratified rocks, bearing an 
irregular surface, from the detritus of which the 
materials of stratified rocks have in great measure 
been derived either directly by the accumulation of 
the ingredients of disintegrated granite rocks ; or indi- 
rectly, by the repeated destruction of different classes 
of stratified rocks, the materials of which had, by 
prior operations, been derived from unstratified forma- 
tions.' ' — Buck! and. 

" In mountainous countries many facts are presented 
to the eye which approach to a standard of measure- 
ment of the average action of the atmosphere and of 
running water, in decomposing and washing off the 
surface of granitic and basaltic rocks. That action is 
sure and constant ; but it is slow, to such a degree 
that not years, but centuries are required for its 
chronicle. Even the abrading of that description of 
rocks where they form the boldest sea-coast, by the 
violence of storms added to the ordinary action of 
water and weather (an addition of great power), has 



APPENDIX. 261 

not materially altered the outline of such shores in 
Cornwall, the west and north of Scotland, Norway, 
and many other countries, since the beginning of our 
historical knowledge. But the action of a fresh water 
river infringing upon hard rocks, is much more 
feeble." — Smith. 

"Every step we take in it [geology]' forces us to 
make unlimited drafts on antiquity." — Scrope, in 
Smith. 

" The detritus of the first dry lands, being drifted 
into the sea, and there spread out into extensive beds 
of mud, and sand, and gravel, would for ever have re- 
mained beneath the surface of the water, had not other 
forces been subsequently employed to raise them into 
dry land. These forces appear to have been the same 
expansive powers of heat and vapor, which, having 
caused the elevation of the first raised portions of the 
fundamental crystalline rocks, continued their ener- 
gies through all succeeding geological epochs, and still 
exert them in producing the phenomena of active vol- 
canoes." — Buckland. 

" All observers admit that the strata were formed 
beneath the water, and have subsequently been con- 
verted into dry land." — Ibid. 

" The first appearance of stratification is in the 



262 



APPENDIX. 



rock called (xneiss. That is composed of the same 
materials as granite, on the irregular outline of which 
it rests. Over the G-neiss- come the beds of Mica, Schist, 
and Slates, whose thickness, ' like that of the (xneiss, 
cannot be ascertained, on account of the intervention 
of other rocks.' Their mode of formation is proved 
by the most striking characters to have been the same 
as that of the G-neiss. If we should venture to estimate 
the united thickness of this class, added to the Grneis- 
sic, at three or even four miles, we could not be charg- 
ed with exaggeration." — Smith. 



on 



" The thickness of these strata we know to be enor- 
mous. These depths are discovered by geological ob- 
servations and inferences — that they extend to many 
miles was also proved. We have every reason to 
know from what is taking place on our own earth, 
that the accumulation of materials at the bottom of 
the ocean, is a work infinitely slow. "We are sure that 
such an accumulation as should produce the primary 
strata, as we now see them, must have occupied a 
space, from the contemplation of which the mind 
shrinks." — McCulloch, as quoted by Smith. 

" Of the next group, the siliceous, slaty, and 
limestone aggregates, to which the name Silurian sys- 
tem is given, — the united thickness is about a mile and 
a half. Who then can calculate the periods of their 
derivation from the older formations, their deposition, 



APPENDIX. 263 

their elevations, and distortions ; their convulsions, 
penetrations, and alterations of the adjoining rocks, by 
frequent outbursts from the fiery liquid below, and 
other movements, till they were brought to their ex- 
isting condition ? It would seem perfectly impossible 
for any person, but moderately acquainted with the 
visible phenomena of volcanic regions, to escape the 
impression that myriads of ages must have been occu- 
pied in the production of these formations, before the 
creation of man and the adaptation of the earth's sur- 
face for his abode. Evidence to the same effect would 
accumulate upon us to a vast amount, in examining 
the old red sandstone, a remarkable deposit, several 
thousand feet in thickness, found in some parts .of 
Great Britain, more abundantly in Ireland, and either 
in resemblance, or in equivalence, in many foreign 
regions. Next we come to the mountain limestone, 
consisting almost entirely of the shells and coralline 
productions of sea animals, often a thousand and more 
feet in thickness. This formation is frequently more 
or less interposed among the beds of coal, composed of 
compressed vegetable matter, underlaid and overlaid 
with shales, and sandstones in every variety ; often 
effecting a thickness of three thousand feet. The new 
red sandstone advances us about another thousand 
feet, 

'' Other changes implying probably some alteration 
in the disposition, and consequently the action of the 
fiery gulf below, marked the next great system, or 



264 APPENDIX. 

series of rocks, — the Oolitic. Its general thickness 
can be little less than half a mile. It is filled with 
the most convincing proofs of deposition from sea 
water both shallow and deep, the mingled waters of 
river mouths, and perhaps even fresh water of rivers 
and lakes. 

"We arrive, in ascending, at the great masses of 
chalk, and its accompaniments of peculiar clays and 
sands, to the thickness of a thousand feet more. 
Though the lines of stratification are not here so visible 
as in the underlying formations, the evidence of de- 
position from watery mixture, and of very interesting 
effects from molecular and chemical attractions, is so 
clear as to be irresistible. 

" Our last stage of ascent comprehends the tertiary 
series ; a succession of beds, clays, sands, and limes, 
variously intermixed, occupying a thickness of six or 
eight hundred feet. When we have mounted to the 
most recent of those later formations, immediately be- 
low the soil on which we tread, we find enormous 
masses of gravel and other transported materials de- 
monstrated by their position to have been rolled along 
by mighty currents, subsequently to all the lower for- 
mations. 

" In those stratified rocks which are of a sandy con- 
stitution it is common to find pebbles, from the size of 
coriander seeds to that of birds' eggs, and much larger. 
These bear demonstrative evidence of having been 
derived from more ancient rocks, by fracture and de- 






APPENDIX. 265 

tachment, long rolling on a hard bottom under ivater, 
dispersed through the loose sand of a deposit, subsid- 
ing to the lower part if a tolerably free motion were 
permitted, and then consolidated. Let the old red sand- 
stone be our example. In many places the upper part 
of this vast formation is of a closer grain, showing 
that it was produced by the last and finest deposits of 
clayey and sandy mud, tinged as the whole is, with 
oxides and carbonates of iron, usually red bat often 
of other hues. But frequently the lower portions? 
sometimes dispersed heaps, and sometimes the entire 
formation, consist of vast masses of conglomerate 
[pebbles with sand, &c]. 

"The earliest slate rocks, like all other strata, must 
have been originally deposited in a position horizontal 
or nearly so. By subsequent movements, not one but 
evidently many, they have been raised to all eleva- 
tions, and bent to the utmost extent of contortion : as 
is shown by the lines of stratification. 

" The stratification contains in itself the evidence 
of having required periods, impossible indeed to be de- 
termined by any assignment of figures, but to which, 
judging from all approximating evidence, our cycles of 
time afford none but a totally defective measure of 
comparison." — Smith. 

" It appears that from the remotest periods there 
has been ever a coming in of new organic forms, and 
an extinction of those which pre-existed on the earth ; 
12 



266 APPENDIX. 

some species having endured for a longer, others for a 
shorter time ; but none having reappeared after once 
dying out." — -Lyell 

" General and particular results all agree in demon- 
strating that the physical conditions of the ancient 
ocean must have been very different in some respects, 
from what obtain at present ; and that these conditions 
were subject to great variation during the very long 
periods which elapsed in the formation of the crust of 
the earth. In the course of these changes, whole 
groups of animals perished ; others were created to 
perish in their turn." — 'Phillips. 

11 The former universality of the ocean [is] now dis- 
proved by the discovery of the remains of terrestrial 
vegetation in strata of every age, even the most an- 
cient." — Lyell. 

" In an early part of our inquiry, we traced back the 
history of the primary rooks, which composed the first 
solid materials of the globe, to a probable condition of 
universal fusion, incompatible wich the existence of 
any forms of organic life, and saw reason to con- 
clude that as the crust of the globe became gradually 
reduced in temperature, the unstratified crystalline 
rocks, and stratified rocks produced by their destruc- 
tion, were disposed and modified, during long periods 
of time, by physical forces, the same in kind with 






APPENDIX. 267 

those which actually subsist, but more intense in 
their degree of operation ; and that the result has been 
to adapt our planet to become the receptacle of divers 
races of vegetable and animal beings, and finally to 
render it a fit and convenient habitation for mankind." 
— Buckland. 

" In the course of our inquiry, we have found abun- 
dant proofs, both of the beginning and the end of seve- 
ral successive systems of animal and vegetable life ; 
each compelling us to refer its origin to the direct 
agency of creative interference." — Ibid. 

" If geology should seem to require some little con- 
cession from the literal interpreter of Scripture, it may 
fairly be held to afford ample compensation for this 
demand, by the large additions it has made to the evi- 
dences of natural religion, in a department where reve- 
lation was not designed to give information." — Ibid. 

" There are good grounds for supposing that, beyond 
a certain thickness for the solid crust of the earth, 
which can hardly be estimated at so much as thirty 
miles, the next contiguous matter is in a state of fusion, 
at a temperature probably higher than any that man 
can produce by artificial means ; or any natural heat 
that can exist on the surface." 

" All strata follow antecedent ones in an order which 
is certain and invariable for every region of the earth. 



268 APPENDIX. 

Nowhere, however, is the entire series found. Some 
member or many are wanting in every assignable 
locality ; but they are never put in a violated order. 
The lower strata, manifestly the most early, are gene- 
rally of the greatest extent in length and breadth, and 
very much the deepest in thickness. The higher and 
newer are severally of less magnitude in every dimen- 
sion. Yet, in no case, must the idea of size or extent 
be taken upon a trifling scale. Even with the most 
recent, the area of one formation is often some hun- 
dreds of square miles," — Smith. 

"There are thirty, or rather more, well defined beds, 
layers, or strata, of different mineral masses, [differ- 
ent in mineral composition,) lying upon each other, so 
as to form the surface of the globe on which we dwell. 
These combine themselves, by natural characters, into 
three or four grand groups. Compare them to a set 
of books, in thirty or forty volumes, piled up on their 
flat sides. They are placed one over the other, in a 
sure and known order of succession ; that is, though 
in every locality some are wanting, the order of posi- 
tion is never violated." — Ibid. 

" In the older fossiliferous rocks, animal life appears 
in as full a development with respect to size, as in the 
existing analogous animals. It does not appear that 
animal life, at that period, was limited with respect to 
number. The lower Silurian rocks are crowded, in 



APPENDIX. 269 

some localities, with organic bodies ; and their absence 
over extensive districts is only a condition in the dis- 
tribution of testacea, &c, which prevails in our seas." 
—Ibid. 

"In the superficial gravel containing rolled blocks 
of stone, coming from vast distances, we find bones of 
the elephant, rhinoceros, &c, of extinct species, min- 
gled with bones of mammals of known species." — 
Ibid. 

" The sources from which the matter of these eject- 
ed [volcanic] rocks ascend, are deeply seated beneath 
the granite ; but it is not yet decided whether the im- 
mediate causes of an eruption be the access of water 
to local accumulations of the metalloid bases of the 
earths and alkalies ; or whether lava be derived di- 
rectly from that general mass of incandescent elements, 
which may probably exist at a depth of about one 
hundred miles beneath the surface of our planet. The 
intrusion both of dykes and irregular beds of unstrati- 
fied crystalline matter, into rocks of every age and 
every formation, all proceeding upwards from an un- 
known depth, and often accumulated into vast masses, 
overlying the surface of stratified rocks, are pheno- 
mena co-extensive with the globe. Each individual 
movement [of the volcanic forces] has contributed its 
share towards the final object, of conducting the mol- 
ten materials of an uninhabitable planet, through long 



270 



APPENDIX. 



successions of change and of convulsive movements, 
to a tranquil state of equilibrium ; in which it has be- 
come the convenient and delightful habitation of man, 
and of the multitudes of terrestrial creatures that are 
his fellow tenants of its actual surface." — Buckland. 

" It is from the more ancient coal deposits that the 
most extraordinary evidence has been supplied in proof 
of the former existence of an extremely hot climate in 
those latitudes which are now the temperate and colder 
regions of the globe. It appears from the fossils of the 
carboniferous period, that the flora [contained] tree 
ferns, or plants allied to them, from forty to fifty feet 
in height ; and arborescent lycopodiaceae, from sixty to 
seventy feet high. Of the above classes of vegetables, 
the species are all small at present in cold climates ; — 
their development even in the hottest parts of the 
globe, is now inferior to that indicated by the petrified 
forms of the coal formation. In regard to the geogra- 
phical extent of the ancient vegetation, it was not con- 
fined, says M. Brongniart, to a small space, as to Eu- 
rope for example ; for the same forms are met with 
again at great distances. Thus the coal plants of 
North America are, for the most part, identical with 
those of Europe, and all belong to the same genera. 
The uninjured corals and chambered univalves of Mel- 
ville Island [lat. Yo°] and other high latitudes, suffi- 
ciently prove that, during the carboniferous period, there 
was an elevated temperature, even in northern regions 



APPENDIX. 271 

bordering on the Arctic circle. The heat and humi- 
dity of the air, and the uniformity of climate, appear 
to have been most remarkable when the oldest strata 
hitherto discovered were formed. The approximation 
to a climate similar to that now enjoyed in these lati- 
tudes, does not commence till the era of the formations 
termed tertiary ; and while the different tertiary rocks 
were deposited in succession, the temperature seems 
to have been still farther lowered, and to have con- 
tinned to diminish gradually, even after the appear- 
ance upon the earth of a great portion of the existing 
species" — Lyell. 

" The upper bed of rock salt in Cheshire is twenty- 
six yards thick, and is separated from the lower bed 
of salt by a stratum of argillaceous stone ten yards 
thick. The lower salt has been penetrated forty yards. 
In another part of Cheshire three beds of rock salt have 
been found. The uppermost is four feet thick, the se- 
cond twelve, and the lower has been penetrated twenty- 
five yards, but is not cut through. The rock salt at 
Cardona, in Spain, is 663 feet in height. Hungary and 
Poland afford the most numerous and extensive reposi- 
tories of rock salt in Europe. The beds are inclined 
at an an°de of 40°. There is an extensive formation 
stretching on each side of the Carpathian mountains 
for 600 miles. In the lofty deserts of Caramania in 
Asia, — in Great Tartary, Thibet, and Indostan, this 
mineral is also found. In the elevated mountains of 



272 APPENDIX. 

Peru, it is said to occur at the height of 9000 feet 
above the level of the sea. In the desert of Lybia 
there is an extensive bed ; and it is found in South 
Africa, New South Wales, and in various islands." — 
Bakewell. 

" Taken as an illustration of the structure of the 
crust of our globe, the successive coats of an onion, if 
they were of different colors, might not unaptly repre- 
sent the different strata that cover certain districts. 
The different strata which occur under each other, are 
not arranged in the order of their density or specific 
gravity. Coal strata, for instance, are often covered 
with strata of iron stone, the specific gravity of which 
is more than twice that of coal. Primitive rocks were 
so called because no fossil remains of animals or ves:e- 
tables, nor any fragments of other rocks, were found 
imbedded in them. Those rocks generally occur in 
immense masses or beds ; they form the lowest part of 
the earth's surface with which we are acquainted, and 
constitute the foundation on which rocks of the other 
classes are laid. The rocks which immediately cover 
them contain, almost exclusively, the organic remains 
of the lowest class of animals. The lower series of 
secondary rocks are almost all distinctly stratified. 
Every regular stratum in which organic remains are dis- 
seminated, was once the uppermost rock, however deep 
it may be below the present surface. If it had been 
predicted a century ago, that a volume would be discov- 



APPENDIX. 273 

ered, containing the natural history of the earliest in- 
habitants of the globe, which flourished and perished 
before the creation of man, what curiosity would have 
been excited to see this wonderful volume ; how anxious- 
ly would philosophers have waited for the discovery ! 
But this volume is now discovered ; it is the volume of 
nature, rich with the spoils of primeval ages, unfolded 
to the view of the attentive observer, in the strata that 
compose the crust of the globe. Some of the more de- 
licately constructed animals, and the fish whose bodies 
are found entire, imbedded in stone, appear to have 
been instantaneously destroyed and enveloped in mine- 
ral matter, before the putrefactive process could com- 
mence. Stratified rocks are composed of layers of 
stone, laid over each other, and divided by parallel 
seams like the leaves of a closed book. In these seams 
or partings, which divide the strata, there are fre- 
quently thin laminae of soft earthy matter; but some- 
times the surfaces of the upper and lower stratum are 
so closely joined that it requires a considerable force 
to separate them. The highest known point at which 
granite has been observed, in any part of the world, is 
Mont Blanc — 15,680 feet above ihe level of the sea. 
In the northern or Swiss Alps, granite is seen only near 
their bases ; the summits are composed of immense 
beds of stratified rocks. In the extensive range of the 
Andes, granite has not been found in a greater eleva- 
tion than 11,500 feet. The summits of the Himma- 
leh mountains are believed to be composed of second- 



274 APPENDIX. 

slyj strata. Though granite may be regarded as the 
lowest known rock formation, yet it is certain, that in 
many countries, the seat of volcanic fire is placed be- 
low granite. All rocks under the coal formation, be- 
long either to the transition or primary class ; and all 
the strata above the coal formation belong either to the 
upper, secondary, or the tertiary class. The different 
strata under a bed of coal are frequently similar to the 
strata over it ; and the same series is again repeated 
under the lower beds of coal, and sometimes with a 
perfect similarity both in the succession and thickness 
of each. The thickness of the coal strata in the same 
coal-field often varies from a few inches to several 
yards ; but each stratum generally preserves the same 
thickness throughout its whole extent. A dyke is a 
wall of mineral matter cutting through the strata in a 
position nearly vertical. The great coal formation 
appears to be confined to the lower secondary strata, 
generally resting on transition limestone. A remark- 
able coal formation occurs in Switzerland at the depth 
of 280 feet from the surface ; over the coal there is a 
stratum of bituminous limestone, containing fluviatile 
shells, and bones and teeth of the large mammalia, 
particularly the teeth of a species of mastodon. Were 
it not for the organic remains in different rocks, we 
could not be certain that all rock formations were not 
contemporaneous. With respect to the identity of age, 
or what is pedantically named the synchronism of rock 
formations in distant countries, there can be little hesi- 
12 * 



APPENDIX. 275 

tation in admitting it, where the association with 
other rock formations is similar in both countries. The 
disintegration of rocks and mountains is constantly 
taking place by the incessant operation of the ele- 
ments." — BakewelL 

"The following Geological doctrines are derived from 
the preceding extracts, and others elsewhere inserted, 
and from other passages in the writings of the same 
authors. 

1. That the globe was at first in a state of igneous 
fluidity ; and that the process" by which its surface be- 
came cooled resulted in the formation of a crust of 
granite or crystalline rocks. . 

2. That the surfaces of these rocks were, by the 
combined action of air and water, worn down and 
floated from higher to lower levels in running water, 
and deposited at the bottom of seas, lakes, &c, in lay- 
ers, beds, or strata. 

3. That these strata, though differing widely from 
each other in their composition, are respectively formed 
of homogeneous materials, and in an order of succes- 
sion which is uniform ; that the lower members of the 
series are much thicker, and occupy areas of larger ex- 
tent, than those above them, and especially those 
nearest the present surface ; and that they were de- 
posited in a position horizontal or nearly so. 

4. That the entire series of stratified formations was 
effected by the sfow and gradual operations of those 



270 



APPENDIX. 



second causes, mechanical and chemical, which are at 
present producing analogous results ; and that the pro- 
cess occupied inconceivable periods of duration. 

5. That when by this process, and by the elevation 
of the deposits formed under seas, or otherwise, por- 
tions of dry land appeared, certain plants and animals 
were created to occupy them ; and subsequently, from 
time to time, new creations of organic beings, terres- 
trial and marine, took place. That the remains of 
many of the plants and animals, which were created 
and flourished successively at different periods, were 
buried in the slow process by which the successive 
stratifications were formed, and are now discovered in 
a fossil state; and that the strata were subsequently 
upheaved by forces from below, to various degrees of 
inclination and elevation. 

6. That the object of the stratifications, and other 
changes referred to, was to improve the condition of 
the earth, and fit it to be the abode of man. 

7. That after the complement of geological changes 
had been effected, and the stratified series ended, the 
whole was thrown into a state of chaos or confusion, 
darkness and ruin ; and was reconstructed and arranged 
so as to be fit for the reception of man, conformably 
to the account of the " six days" operations recorded 
by Moses. [Held by those who desire to show that 
their theory is consistent with the Mosaic account]. 

8. That in the progress of those changes, or at some 
period, the climate both of the northern and southern 



APPENDIX. 277 

hemisphere, and especially of the polar regions, was 
changed from a state of tropical heat and productive- 
ness to a state of extreme coldness and sterility. 

9. That since the date of the creation, as recorded 
by Moses, the same mechanical and chemical causes 
which operated the preceding geological changes, have 
been at work, but have produced but slight effects, at 
least within the last 3000 years. 

10. That the result of the whole is, that the state of 
the earth is, and has been, since the date of the Mosaic 
creation, peculiarly fitted to be the residence, and to 
subserve the comfort and happiness of man. 



"It is in harmony with what the Scriptures teach, to 
affirm that the earth as originally created was as per- 
fect in its kind, as man or any of the creatures formed to 
occupy it in a state of innocence and enjoyment ; per- 
fect for the perennial and happy abode of man in his ori- 
ginal character ; perfect in the nature and combination 
of the materials of its surface, for the spontaneous and 
boundless production and support of plants and an- 
imals ; perfect in all its conditions and adaptations, 
its temperature, its climates, its atmosphere, its free- 
dom from everything noxious, everything tending to 
disease and dissolution. 

"It surely will not be denied that the character of 
man in his primeval state, his relations to the lower 
animals, his physical circumstances, the career as- 
signed to him in case of his obedience, the complete- 



278 



APPENDIX. 



ness, the harmony, the bliss of the entire scene, re- 
quired a far different state of the earth, of the materials 
which compose its surface, of its climates, its atmos- 
phere, and its products as to their quality, spontaniety, 
and abundance, from that which now exists ; far dif- 
ferent, indeed, from the conditions and adaptations, 
which it is in the nature of geological changes, how- 
ever long-continued, to produce ; far different from any- 
thing indicated in that re-construction and fitting up, 
and subjection to a continued and ceaseless process of 
change, which the geologists inform us of. That pri- 
meval epoch and condition of man assuredly implies a 
state of the earth which needed no improvement, no 
progressive course of physical changes, no geological 
processes to perfect its adaptations. Can any one 
bring himself to think that if man had not sinned and 
brought upon himself misery and death ; that if he 
had continued holy, and had consequently been ex- 
empted from all evil, and confirmed in a life of perpet- 
ual innocence and blessedness, the physical conditions 
of the earth would be such as we find them ? That 
any such changes, catastrophes, cataclysms, derange- 
ments, eruptions, transitions of climate, as have taken 
place, would have been consistent with what his well- 
being required ? That it was at first and prior to his 
apostacy, more imperfect than it has been since, and 
therefore required to be improved by a perpetual 
course of geological changes ? 
"In short, is it not reasonable and safe to conclude, 



APPENDIX, 



279 



that if the Scripture account of the creation and fall 
of man is to be believed ; if man originally was holy 
and happy ; if he fell from that estate, and by his fall 
brought death and woe into the world ; the theory of 
the geologists as ^° the causes and manner of the 
changes which have occurred, cannot be correct. 



" If there was a reason for the creation of matter and 
of man, a reason in the view of the Creator, who 
seeth the end from the beginning, and whoso counsels 
and purposes are eternal, it doubtless embraced and 
had relation to, all their conditions and history. And 
since various, peculiar, and extraordinary Divine in- 
terpositions have undeniably attended the changes 
which have taken place in the moral and physical 
character and condition of man ; why should there be 
such reluctance and dread to refer the changes in the 
condition of the earth to unusual interpositions of that 
power which created, upholds, and governs all ? The 
history of man is intimately connected with that of the 
irrational and material world. It is scarcely bordering 
on the figurative to say, that when man fell, " nature 
through all her works gave signs of woe." This con- 
nection and joint participation in catastrophes and 
changes marks all their subsequent course, and the 
prophetic announcements indicate that the close of 
that course of things, in which they have been so as- 
sociated, vvhen changes in their respective condition 
shall be completed, will be no less signally marked by 



280 APPENDIX. 

extraordinary interpositions than their creation, and 
the establishment of their relations originally, was. 
How, then, without violence to all analogy and propri- 
ety, can it be supposed that the earth, in the whole 
course of the changes it has undergone, was left to the 
operation of the laws of nature, any more than that 
all the phenomena of the moral and physical history 
of man should be ascribed to the operation of those 
laws ? Can the supposition be made without virtual- 
ly excluding, in both cases, all interference on the 
part of the Creator, after the establishment of those 
laws; all miracles, changes of dispensations, and, in a 
word, excluding revelation, and investing the laws of 
nature with an all-pervading efficiency ? 



"But what are the laws of nature, so familiarly re- 
ferred to by our philosophers, as if they had an ab- 
stract and independent existence and efficiency, and 
implied something different from facts, qualities, 
effects, or other phenomena observed. They really 
mean nothing, and are nothing, more than our mode 
of indicating or expressing the facts, qualities, or cir- 
cumstances in which the phenomena observed are per- 
ceived to agree. We call the uniformity or constancy 
of such agreement a law, as if it was the cause or 
reason of the phenomena. We impose upon ourselves 
by this high-sounding name, and by calling all that is 
back of it, nature, because we perceive nothing but the 
phenomena, and their coincidence or agreement. In 



APPENDIX. 281 

this way the Divine efficiency may be, and often is, as 
truly excluded, as it would be if we should say in 
plain terms, that the facts, qualities, and circum- 
stances which we observe, are their own cause. 



"The rules of philosophizing restrain the geologist 
from supposing a preternatural cause, when he can as- 
sign any other. Hence so large a part of his atten- 
tion is taken up in discovering how effects might have 
been produced by natural causes. There is nothing in 
the phenomena of Geology which would not be much 
better accounted for, if produced rapidly by special 
Divine interposition, than it can be by any gradual and 
ordinary operation of natural causes. And all that is 
wanting, in any case, is the admission of a sufficient 
reason for special or extraordinary interpositions. For, 
as such interpositions have undeniably taken place in 
relation to this world, both in the creation of it, and in 
various dispensations to man, there is nothing in the 
nature of the case to hinder them, or to render their 
recurrence improbable, whenever there was a reason. 

"But let it be distinctly noted, that if the geological 
theory is true, then all that belongs to the moral 
system must be excluded from consideration in ex- 
amining the physical changes in the earth. And this, 
in truth, is just what the philosophers hold to. For 
natural causes, the laws of nature are permanent and 
uniform, and in their ordinary operation can produce 
no other than ordinary natural effects. Nothing for- 



282 APPENDIX. 

eign to those effects could, therefore, enter into the 
case. Those causes might go on in one steady course, 
but they could work no miracles to adapt themselves, 
or their operations, to the exigencies of a moral system 
or the demands of moral causes. If those natural 
causes involve in their operations anything of design, 
it must be a design coeval with their origin and inhe- 
rent in them. To talk of their being controlled and 
directed to any other or different end, is to talk of a 
miracle, as much as in the case of results contrary to, 
or far transcending the power of those causes. Ac- 
cordingly, when the geologists speak of design, they 
mean the original and general design of improving the 
condition of the earth, and fitting it for the conve- 
nience of man. In a word, to ascribe the changes in 
the earth to these natural causes, is in plain terms to 
exclude moral causes and special reasons altogether. 
On the other hand, however, if those changes are due 
to moral and special causes or reasons ; causes wholly 
foreign in their nature to anything incident to the 
laws of nature, there is nothing in those laws to 
hinder or interfere with the results. Those natural 
causes may be, as far as they go, in perfect harmony 
with the changes — all the mechanical and chemical 
agencies may be employed in producing them, though 
the changes themselves may be such, in their magni- 
tude and rapidity of occurrence, as those agencies, 
left to themselves, would never operate. 
"Now the earth presents to us indubitable evidence 



APPENDIX, 283 

of vast and manifold changes. These the geologist 
refers to the gradual operation of natural causes, and 
assigns to them the object of improving the earth. 
The Scriptures bring to our view moral reasons for 
these changes, which reasons, however, are excluded 
from all connection with the changes, both by the mode 
in which, on the geological theory, they were pro- 
duced, and by their occurrence long and long before 
the Scripture era. Those moral reasons, therefore, are 
wholly shut out and at least virtually denied. 
They have never had any counterpart. That which 
they were reasons for, and which they required, has 
never taken place. A curse was denounced upon 
the earth, but it has never been executed. The earth 
has been improved by the Laws of Nature, but never 
visited for any violation of Moral Laws. 



"The geologists treat the whole subject of the earth, 
its origin, its object, its condition and history, during 
the alleged incalculable periods, and down to the close 
of those physical changes which constitute the field of 
their research, just as they would if there were extant 
no records of inspiration ; just as they would, on sup- 
position that its creation involved no moral purposes, 
that it was not intended as the scene of a stupendous 
system of moral exhibitions, agency, and government ; 
a scene for the trial and discipline of accountable 
agents, and for the most varied and wondrous mani- 
festations on the part of their Creator ; just as they 



284 APPENDIX. 

would, if there had been no sin, no penal announce- 
ments or visitations, no Mediatorial interposition, no 
redemption achieved, or resurrection and retribution 
foretold. 

"They begin by supposing the matter of the globe to 
have been somehow detached from some nebular mass, 
and thrust into its orbit in a state of igneous fluidity ; 
where, becoming subject to those laws of Nature, which 
in accounting for physical phenomena are an unfailing 
resource, it necessarily assumed an oblate form. By 
a course of natural processes its surface at length be- 
came partially cooled and solid, and acquired a soil. 
At this stage of its progress, the only uses and pur- 
poses to be subserved by it, which are indicated in the 
whole course of the geological period, began to be dis- 
closed by the appearance of certain vegetables and rep- 
tiles. Successive creations, growths, and inhumations, 
occupied myriads of ages. If there was any intelli- 
gent design, object, or purpose in this, any discovera- 
ble or probable use or intention, it was only that of 
giving an existence to irrational creatures, with such 
enjoyment as they were capable of. There were no 
intelligible creatures present to witness their happi- 
ness, or to observe anything of wisdom, or of good- 
ness in their formation or condition. In all excepting 
their brute enjoyments, they existed for no higher 
purpose, and answered no higher end, than the unor- 
ganized matter around them, unless the preservation of 
their relics to be invoked in these last times, and 



APPENDIX. 285 

made to testify against the volume of revelation, be 
claimed for them as a merit. They occupied, during 
countless ages, a mute and solitary world, which per- 
formed its ceaseless revolutions, lighted by the same 
sun by day, and by the same moon and stars by night, 
that were afterwards, when all their generations had 
become extinct, appointed to perform those services 
for man. 

" Should any one, speculating on the fact that tropi- 
cal plants and animals once flourished as profusely in 
the Arctic as in the Equatorial regions, conclude that 
the sun must have been created for the special purpose 
of furnishing the extraordinary quantity of light and 
heat required at the poles under those circumstances, 
and proceed to establish his inference by referring to 
the fossil remains of those regions, specifying, as to 
the plants, their extreme dimensions, luxuriance of 
growth, and other particulars, and, as to the animals, 
from the minutest families of indusias to the largest 
mammalia, the fact that they had eyes as well as 
stomachs ; and should he go on to infer, that the sun, 
having performed this important office during countless 
ages, and supplied all the light and heat which were 
necessary during the long nights of his absence, as 
well as during the alternate periods of his visibility in 
the respective polar circles, till " the great year of geo- 
logy" had elapsed, was shorn of his superfluous beams, 
and restricted in his office, when, for the reception 
and accommodation of man, the earth was reconstruct- 



286 APPENDIX. 

ed, and brought into that improved and felicitous con- 
dition which it now enjoys, with its congealed arctics, 
its frigid and torrid zones, and the storms, vicissitudes, 
and uncertainties of its temperate latitudes ; he would 
but exemplify the spirit of that theory, which, under 
the intoxicating influence of novel discoveries and in- 
comprehensible facts, and in all the affectation and 
pride of science, seeks to make the earth its own inter- 
preter, disregarding or postponing all consideration of 
the inspired volume ; he would but exhibit the spirit 
of that philosophy which discerns more light in the 
phosphorescence of a lizard's bones, than in the orb of 
day — more meaning in a fossil shell, than in the sacrea 
oracle. 
"The most stupendous fact, within the cognizance of 
man, in the whole field of his observation and research, 
is the existence of that volume which discloses to us 
all that we know of the invisible ; all that we know, or 
can divine, of the final causes, reasons, purposes, de- 
signs, of the creation, of the earth and its inhabitants, 
and of the changes they have undergone, or are yet 
to undergo. When regardless of this source of in- 
formation, the philosopher of a fallen race, worn to a 
skeleton by the labor of his physical researches, and 
mentally subdued by the hallucination of a single idea, 
sets himself to account for the facts which he discov- 
ers, reasoning from an infinite variety of details to the 
reasons and causes of them, we need not wonder at his 
credulity, his presumption, his monstrous theories, his 



APPENDIX. 287 

dogmatism, his intolerance, his skepticism. When he 
puts that volume aside for teaching what he does not 
like, or because he deems it too modern, too unphilo- 
sophical, or too obscure, to throw any light upon his 
science, he turns away from its author, fixes his gaze 
upon a world of creatures, unassociated with any 
direct or certain connection with the power or wisdom 
of a Creator, and plunges into the dark charnel-house 
of petrifactions, and the illimitable vortex of duration. 
Science, indeed, helps him in the discovery of facts ; 
but, in reasoning on them, he exhibits only the blind- 
ness and imbecility of those unassisted faculties, which 
he employs in that process. Were he content to ab- 
stain from theorizing, from attempts to be wise in 
what is far beyond his sphere ; content with the dis- 
covery and disclosure of facts without affecting to ac- 
count for them, he would deserve respect and applause 
for the toil he undergoes, the patience, the self-denial, 
the diligence, the skill, the perseverance, evinced by 
his researches, and for the practical utility of his 
labors. But when he treats the Book of Divine reve- 
lation with contempt, and sets up his wisdom in its 
place, it is quite too much for him to claim or receive 
the sympathy and homage of any Doctors of Divinity, 
or other " professed friends," whose regard for that 
Book exceeds their ambition to be thought learned in 
physical science, and who would not purchase the re- 
putation, by swallowing, blindfold, any dose prepared 
for them. 



288 APPENDIX. 

"A brief notice of the opinions of the geological 
writers, as to the inadequacy of the Noachian Deluge 
to account for the changes which have taken place on 
the surface of the earth, or any considerable portion of 
them, is subjoined, not with a view to suggest or sup- 
port any theory of the effects of that catastrophe, as to 
their extent, or the mode of operation by which they 
were produced. The Scripture narrative is delivered 
in such terms as to authorize the belief that the effects 
of that visitation were as extensive as the object and 

# 

reason of it can, to any one, appear to have required. 
. The narrative gives it all the characters of an extraor- 
dinary visitation of Divine Providence. It was a curse 
upon the earth and its inhabitants. " (xod looked 
upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt : for all 
flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And 
Grod said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come be- 
fore me : for the earth is filled with violence through 
them : and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 
And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon 
the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath 
of life, from under heaven : and everything that is in 
the earth shall die. And all flesh died that moved 
upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle, and of beast, 
and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth, and every man : all in whose nostrils was the 
breath of life, of all that was in the dry land died. 
And every living substance was destroyed which was 
upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, 



APPENDIX. 289 

and the creeping things, and the fowl of heaven ; and 
they were destroyed from the earth ; and Noah only 
remained alive, and they that were with him in the 
ark." Immediately after the event, " The Lord said, 
I will not again curse the ground any more for man's 
sake ; for [or though] the imagination of man's heart 
is evil from his youth ; neither will I again smite any 
more every thing living, as I have done." And to 
Noah and his sons, He said, " I will establish my 
covenant with you ; neither shall all flesh be cut off any 
more by the waters of a flood ; neither shall there any 
more be a flood to destroy the earth." 
"Mr. Lyell, in his brief notice of the " Supposed 
effects of the Flood," alludes to the opinions which 
had been entertained among the learned, on the ques- 
tion "whether the Deluge of the Scriptures was uni- 
versal in reference to the whole surface of the globe, 
or only so with respect to that portion of it which was 
then inhabited by man. On the latter supposition, he 
thinks such an event might be accounted for by the 
sudden outbreak of u extensive lakes elevated above the 
level of the ocean," as Lake Superior is ; or by the de- 
pression of large tracts of dry land below that level. 
He refers to volcanic and other phenomena, as indicat- 
ing the improbability of the Flood having been univer- 
sal ; and observes, "that in the narrative of Moses 
there are no terms employed that indicate the impetu- 
ous rushing of the waters, either as they rose, or when 
they retired. On the contrary, the olive branch 
13 



290 APPENDIX. 

brought back by the Dove, seems as clear an indica- 
tion to us, that the vegetation was not destroyed, as 
it was then to Noah, that the dry land was about to 
appear." 

"He concludes as follows : " For my own part, I 
have always considered the Flood, when its univer- 
sality, in the strictest sense of the term, is insisted 
upon, as a preternatural event far beyond the reach of 
philosophical inquiry, whether, as to the causes em- 
ployed to produce it, or the effects most likely to re- 
sult from it. At the same time, it is clear that they 
who are desirous of pointing out the coincidence of 
geological phenomena with the occurrence of such a 
general catastrophe, must neglect no one of the cir- 
cumstances enumerated in the Mosaic history, least of 
all so remarkable a fact as that the olive remained 
standing while the waters were abating." The appa- 
rent candor of the former of these sentences is wanting 
in the latter. The history does not affirm that the 
olive remained standing till the waters were wholly 
withdrawn, as the sentence seems intended to imply. 
And it is to be observed, that Noah waited more than 
three months longer before he left the ark. 

"The following remarks are suggested by the views 
of this writer. 

1. He wholly omits all reference to any moral 
reasons for the Deluge, whether that event was local 
or universal, preternatural, or only the effect of natu- 
ral causes, 






APPENDIX. 



291 



2. He assumes that those who believe the Deluge 
to have been preternatural and universal, are justly to 
be expected to point out the coincidence of geological 
phenomena with such a general catastrophe. Which 
is as much as to say that one can have no sufficient 
grounds for such a belief, unless he can point out such 
coincidence ; that the evidences of geological pheno- 
mena, that is, the inferences made therefrom, are 
superior to all other sources of evidence, and are to be 
taken as the criterion in deciding what the Scriptures 
teach. It might, with equal reason, be said, that he 
who learns from the Bible, and believes on that autho- 
rity that there was a moral reason for the creation of 
the world out of nothing, must show how such creation 
could be effected, and point out the coincidence of geo- 
logical phenomena with his notion of such a process ; 
and that he who, on the authority of Scripture, be- 
lieves in a resurrection, should be able to explain, 
" How the dead are raised up, and with what body 
they do come." 

3. He refers to the olive leaf as the most remark- 
able circumstance in the narrative, against the suppo- 
sition, that the flood produced any considerable effects ; 
as though the narrative in that particular was to be 
taken literally, and relied on, without even an attempt 
at explanation, though apparently inconsistent with 
other parts of the history 

4. His work, at large, is occupied in so accounting 
for the changes in the earth, as to leave nothing to be 



292 APPENDIX. 

accomplished by the flood. In accomplishing this 
task, however, he treats of the upheaval of mountains 
to account for existing phenomena, in a way, and 
with illustrations respecting their composition, and the 
existence of sedimentary deposits on their highest 
summits, which may well justify the supposition, that 
such upheaval may have occurred, for the most part, 
since the epoch of the Deluge, and the change of cli- 
mates ; and that there were no very elevated summits 
prior to that epoch. 
"The whole time, from the day on which " all the 
fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the 
windows of heaven were opened," to the going forth 
from the ark, was twelve months and ten days, or 370 
days. The ark rested on the 150th day ; on the 223d 
day the tops of the mountains were seen. Forty-seven 
days after that, or on the 270th day, the Dove returned 
with an olive leaf. It was still 100 days before the 
earth was dry enough to permit Noah to leave the ark. 
Now if the flood was as long rising as falling, its sub- 
sidence commenced on the 185th day, in which case 
more than half the time of subsidence elapsed after 
the return of the Dove ; if the subsidence commenced 
immediately after the ark rested, then nearly half the 
time occupied by that process passed after the return 
of the Dove. In either case, if the flood was preterna- 
tural and universal, and covered the tops of the highest 
mountains to the depth of fifteen cubits, or twenty-six 
and a quarter feet, then the fall during the first half 



APPENDIX. 293 

of the time occupied by the subsidence can hardly be 
conceived to have been such as to expose any part of 
the general surface near the base of the mountain. 

"If the tree grew on the mountain itself upon which 
the ark rested, midway, or at a higher or a lower point, 
between its summit and the level of the surrounding 
country, then it may well be supposed to have main- 
tained its position, since the mountain remained, what- 
ever changes took place elsewhere on the surface of 
the earth. That its position was far above the ordi- 
nary level of the country, would seem to be clearly 
indicated by the fact, that 100 days were required for 
the further subsidence of the waters ; and if it occu- 
pied so elevated a position, it must of course have 
been upon the side or top of some mountain. 

"If the olive was not situated on a primitive moun- 
tain, which remained unchanged by the deluge, but 
upon the ordinary soil, there was ample time, within 
the remaining 100 days, for its destruction, and for 
any imaginable extent of changes, If the leaf was 
plucked by the dove from a tree still standing in its 
natural position, probably the uppermost branches only 
were exposed above the surface of the water ; for it 
was but seven days before that the dove found no rest 
for the sole of her foot — for the waters were on the face 
of the whole earth. Whatever changes in the con- 
dition of the earth the flood may have occasioned, 
were perhaps more likely to be effected towards the 
last stages of its subsidence than at an earlier period. 



294 APPENDIX. 

"It therefore does not follow, from this remarkable 
fact in the narrative, that the flood produced no con- 
siderable effects in the condition of the earth. Its 
effects, whatever they were, may, for the most part, 
have taken place, universally, or in particular regions, 
after the ark was securely seated on its resting place ; 
and even after the plucking of the olive leaf. 

"The observation of Mr. Lyell, that in the narrative 
of Moses there are no terms employed that indicate 
the impetuous rushing of the waters, either as they 
rose, or when they retired, is far stronger than the 
case will justly admit. The narrative includes such 
terms and phrases as the following : "I will destroy 
them with the earth — I will cause it to rain upon the 
earth forty days and forty nights, and every living 
substance that I have made will I destroy from off 
the face of the earth ; — all the fountains of the great 
deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were 
opened — and the waters prevailed and increased greatly 
upon the earth — and all the high hills that were under 
the whole heaven were covered — and the mountains 
were covered — and God made a wind to pass over the 
earth, and the waters were assuaged ; the fountains 
also of the deep, and the windows of heaven, were 
stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained ; 
and the waters returned from the earth continually — 
and the Lord said, I will not again curse the ground 
any more for man's sake; neither shall all flesh be cut 



APPENDIX. 295 

off any more by the waters of a flood ; neither shall 
there any more be a flood to destroy the earth P 

"Now, whether in so very brief a narrative of the 
means and operations employed in a catastrophe of a 
year's duration, which destroyed every thing that had 
life, such a statement as that all the fountains of the 
great deep were broken up, does not indicate vast and 
universal convulsions throughout the regions of the 
ocean, might at least be matter of question even to a 
geologist. If the statement was intended in any de- 
gree to account for the extent of the deluge, or to in- 
dicate the supply of waters required by the curse pre- 
viously denounced upon the earth, then it is but just 
to consider it as indicating the most stupendous and 
universal action of the waters which can be conceived 
of; and especially, since the breaking up of all the 
fountains of the deep was coincident with the outpour- 
ing of such a rain during forty days and nights, as to 
call for the expression in the narrative, " the windows 
of heaven were opened." 

"It is not until after the flood had attained its ut- 
most height that we are informed that the fountains 
of the deep were stopped. The eruptions, or other 
violent action in and beneath the ocean, would seem, 
therefore, to have continued as long as the waters con- 
tinued to rise over the land. Then, brief as the nar- 
rative is, another agent is mentioned as being intro- 
duced and employed for the sole purpose of driving the 
waters off from the land. " Grod made a wind to pass 



29(3 APPENDIX, 

over the earth, and the waters were assuaged." The 
effects produced by this agent are the counterpart of 
those produced by the breaking up of the fountains of 
the deep, and may have been of like extent and vio- 
lence. If the one was necessary to the raising of the 
waters, the other was equally necessary to assuage 
them. If agitation and violence attended their rising, 
why should they not much more attend their sub- 
sidence, since the agent employed in the latter opera- 
tion is known to be capable of producing effects of that 
nature to any conceivable extent ? And why should 
such an agent be specially introduced and announced, 
if a gradual and tranquil subsidence took place ? 
"But what degree of coolness must a geologist have, 
to contemplate such a description of a deluge, caused 
by the breaking up of all the fountains of the great 
deep, and the incessant pouring down of rain for forty 
days and nights, on the unequal surfaces of the earth, 
and perceive no likelihood of any torrents, any im- 
petuous rushing of water, being occasioned ; a geolo- 
gist who can satisfy himself that the ordinary action 
of water, with the aid of the atmosphere, has in course 
of time worn down solid crystalline rocks enough to 
constitute the whole mass of stratifications ; a geolo- 
gist, who must have witnessed the effects of an ordi- 
nary rain continued for three or four days, in overflow- 
ing the channels of rivers, swelling creeks into tor- 
rents, uprooting trees, excavating the soil, and inun- 
dating the lower levels of the region ; a geologist, in 



APPENDIX. 297 

short, who can discern the mighty effects of small 
causes, if they are but natural and philosophical, but 
who declines all consideration of causes not in that 
category. 

"Now, if any part of the Mosaic account of the De- 
luge is to be taken as meaning what it appears to 
mean ; if that visitation was a curse previously de- 
nounced by the Creator and Moral Governor of the 
world ; if it was executed by his own direct interposi- 
tion, causing a preternatural rain of forty days, and 
breaking up the fountains of the deep ; if the tenants 
of the ark were preserved, during twelve months, in 
their pent-up condition ; if the ark itself was preserved 
and safely grounded on an elevation above the reach 
of the agitations and convulsions which attended the 
subsidence of the waters ; if these things took place, 
then the same power which created the world was 
specially or supernaturally exerted on this occasion ; 
the operations, to whatever extent they may appear to 
have been in harmony with the laws of nature, or the 
ordinary effects of second causes, were miraculous, 
and if miraculous, the magnitude of the results cannot 
be urged as an objection to the mode of their produc- 
tion. Nor can the details comprised in those opera- 
tions, any more than the extent of the operations 
themselves, supposing them to have included all the 
principal changes in the crust of the globe, be urged 
as an objection. It is as conceivable and as credible 
that the materials of the sedimentary formations 
13* 



298 



APPENDIX. 



should, by miraculous interposition, be separated, dis- 
posed in layers or beds, and solidified in a rapid as in 
a gradual manner. Indeed, with respect to a large 
portion of the results, it can scarcely be said to be con- 
ceivable that they should ever have been produced by 
a slow process. 

"If the Scripture narrative of the Deluge be admitted, 
and if it involved a miracle, then the geological theory 
cannot be maintained ; for that account includes a de- 
nunciation and a reason for the catastrophe, which, on 
the geological theory, have had no accomplishment. 
And here is the point where geology and the Bible are 
at issue. It is because the geologist assumes to ac- 
count for the phenomena of the earth by ordinary se- 
cond causes, to the exclusion of preternatural interpo- 
sitions, and to treat the subject as though it were 
wholly independent of moral causes, wholly discon- 
nected from man, and from moral government, that 
his speculations unavoidably conflict with the Bible, 
and carry him into the field of skepticism ; where, if he 
does not openly reject the whole of the sacred records, 
he rejects, or puts such ^construction on portions of 
them, as virtually to discredit and subvert the rest. 

u The suggestions and arguments of Dr. Smith in op- 
position to the universality of the Deluge, and to the 
supposition of its having produced- any considerable 
effects, are only such as might be expected from a 
writer under the double spell of a preconceived and 
favorite notion of a local and temporary submergence 



APPENDIX. 299 

of a certain region in Asia, and of the theory which 
assigns to the changes in the earth an inconceivable 
antiquity ; and are deemed unworthy of any particular 
notice. "Were his views to be taken as correct, a great 
deal more sagacity than they indicate would be neces- 
sary, to devise any tolerable reason why 120 years of 
preparation for the event was necessary, or why an 
Ark should have been constructed at all for the pre- 
servation of eight persons and certain animals, includ- 
ing the winged tribes. They might have all migrated 
from the scene of his local deluge, probably in three 
or four weeks ; and unless the Indian Ocean was raised 
very suddenly, and at the same time that the region 
to be deluged settled down, so as to pour its waters at 
once into the cavity, instead of requiring six months 
for that operation, the rest of the inhabitants and 
animals might have escaped as well as Noah. More- 
over, if such a region settled down, and such an ocean 
was poured into it, what occasion could there have 
been to increase the supply of water by opening the 
windows of heaven and pouring down rain for forty days 
and nights ? He quite trembles at the idea that a 
miracle should be supposed to account for any of the 
facts of an universal Deluge ; and yet his own theory 
involves or needs ten miracles to one required by the 
Scripture narrative. But the whole of his views on 
this subject are utterly puerile, if there was anything 
preternatural in the Deluge itself or in any of its 
effects, and if there was nothing preternatural in the 



300 APPENDIX. 

case, the Scripture account may as well be given up 
first as last. If there was a miracle, it may just as 
well have been a large as a small one ; and doubtless 
was as large and as comprehensive as the occasion re- 
quired. The whole matter turns upon this : was there 
a reason, as the Scriptures clearly intimate, for an uni- 
versal Deluge ? If there was, and until it can be de- 
monstrated that there was not, it is idle, not to say im- 
pious, in man to array his petty objections to the 
possibility of its occurrence. 

" The facts of Geology are not to be denied. That 
the stratified rocks, with their fossil remains, have been 
deposited since the creation, is past all doubts. This 
is the leading fact. The details comprised in it may 
puzzle and confound human reason and science, and 
occasion every variety of construction and hypothesis, 
without resulting in anything conclusive or satis- 
factory. The great question is, What was the occa- 
sion or reason of these changes ? If there was a moral 
reason for them, then they must have taken place 
since the creation and fall of man. If the reason is 
founded in his apostacy, then so far as the Scriptures 
enlighten us upon the subject, it is safe to conclude 
that the Noachic Deluge was the means, or among the 
means, by which the changes were effected ; and in 
that case there can be no more objection to our sup- 
posing a supernatural interposition to the extent re- 
quired to account for the results, than there is to our 
believing in any miracle recorded in Scripture. 



APPENDIX. 301 

"The Scriptures tell us once, and but once, of the 
fountains of the great deep being broken up. G-eology 
indicates a change in the locality of the seas. The 
depth of the sedimentary deposits is to the diameter of 
the sdobe as the thickness of a coat of varnish to an 
artificial globe. Now, with such a reason for it as the 
apostacy of man, it requires no great stretch of ima- 
gination to conceive that the breaking up of all the 
fountains of the great deep, with the other operations 
connected with the Deluge, the mechanical and che- 
mical agencies, and electric and igneous forces, should 
have thrown all the materials of the sedimentary de- 
posits into a state of solution and suspension in the 
waters, distributed those materials into homogeneous 
strata, diffused the fossil relics, changed the locality 
of the seas, and peradventure left the superficial area 
of ocean water several times as great as it was before. 
This reason, if it was a reason at all, was sufficient to 
occasion all the results which geology can point out. 

"If the apostacy of man furnishes the reason for the 
physical changes which have taken place in the con- 
dition of the earth ; if those changes fitted it for the 
abode of a fallen race ; if, pursuant to the wondrous in- 
tervention for man's recovery, of Him by and for whom 
the earth was created, it is yet to be renovated and 
restored to its primitive state, and thence to be the 
abode only of holy and harmless beings, then is the 
subject cleared of all inherent and essential difficulties. 
Its moral requisites are satisfied, which is first and 



302 



APPENDIX. 



chiefly indispensable, in a matter involving the 
creation, character, condition and history of rational 
and accountable creatures, as well as the creation ana 
condition of the earth itself, and of its irrational inha- 
bitants. If there remain physical phenomena which 
science cannot explain, so there are upon the popular 
theory, and upon every theory. The complaint is, 
that science is not content to keep within its limited 
and appropriate province. Can science offer any ex- 
planation as to " the first introduction of a moral and 
intellectual being" on the earth ? or as to the introduc- 
tion of moral evil, by which his character and con- 
dition are, by the concession of all, so much affected ? 
or as to the line, if there be one, which separates the 
purpose, province, and administration of moral govern- 
ment, from that which the Creator exercises over 
matter and irrational creatures? Upon these and 
innumerable other questions, connected more or less 
directly with the phenomena and physical condition 
of the earth, science is necessarily mute. 
"Let it be considered that if there was such a moral 
reason for the changes in the earth, it is no more in- 
cumbent on those who believe that reason to be in- 
dicated in the Scriptures, to account for the mode in 
which the changes were effected, or to specify the in- 
strumentalities employed, that it is to account for the 
creation, the fall of man, the resurrection, or any other 
extraordinary event or procedure in the Divine admin- 
istration. We have an account of the Deluge and of 



APPENDIX, 303 

P 

the reason for that visitation, which will at least allow 
of the supposition of the changes in question having 
been produced by its instrumentality and in connec- 
tion with it. It furnished the medium, water, which 
all allow to have been employed in those changes. If 
any of the phenomena attending it were supernatural, 
the shortness of the time of its duration, considered in 
relation to the magnitude of the results, can no more 
reasonably be urged as an objection, than the portion 
of time occupied in the creation can be urged as insuffi- 
cient for the accomplishment of that work. It is the 
only event recorded in Scripture to which the changes 
can be assigned ; and if it does not indicate the means 
and the occasion, we are without any historical notice 
of either. Here it were the part of wisdom to pause. 
If to the mind of a geologist objections occur founded on 
the phenomena which he observes ; if he cannot reconcile 
those phenomena with the supposition that the changes 
took place in connection with the Deluge, whether on 
account of their character or extent, let him consider 
the intrinsic difficulties of his own theory, and the still 
greater difficulties which attend its bearing on Divine 
B,evelation." 



304 APPENDIX. 



B. 

The following extracts are derived from, and ought 
strongly to recommend the valuable work of Dr. An- 
derson. 

" It has been no part of our vocation in these in- 
vestigations to inquire into the origin of a material 
universe, — what was its pre-existent state, and by 
what process this globe at first was brought into 
an earthy, concrete form. Astronomy has tried va- 
rious solutions. But whether by the splintering 
of other worlds, or the evolution of matter from a Sa- 
turnian ring, or the condensation of gaseous star- 
dust diffused through infinite space, no astronomical 
hypothesis has proved satisfactory. Greology is better 
employed when she assumes a beginning to her re- 
searches upon the visible crust of the globe. The 
mystery of creation is not within the range of her le- 
gitimate territory ; and while the investigation of 
laws, and of the influence of secondary causes, falls 
within the province of both, it may be safely admitted 
that neither astronomy nor geology are, of themselves, 
capable of giving us any real or precise account of the 
origin of the universe, or of any of its parts." — 
Part 4, Chap. i. 

" When the geologist proceeds systematically to 
trace the series of these phenomena, to ascertain their 



APPENDIX. 305 

causes, and to connect together all the indications of 
change that are found in the organic and inorganic 
kingdoms of nature, he attempts the structure of a 
Theory of Creation, which shall embrace the whole 
course of the world, from the earliest to the present 
times ; and which, it may be reasonably concluded, 
may be resolved into one great cycle, yet unfinished. 
But for this the materials of the science are by no 
means prepared, nor is its progress sufficiently ad- 
vanced." — Ibid. 

" There are many points and questions of the deep- 
est importance, that are far from being satisfactorily 
determined ; — the progress of vegetable and animal 
life, for example, is supposed to correspond with the 
varying conditions and changes of the earth's surface, 
when the races are summoned into existence, not at 
once, nor after short intervals, but successively, and 
after ages of unfathomable extent. The record, even 
as a chronicle of mere life and death, is a marvellous 
one, full of singular revelations, and disclosing types 
of organized being that have long been obliterated. 
But when, as yet, there was no rational head in this 
mundane scene, the assumption is, that the inferior 
tribes were for Millions of years the sole living occu- 
pants of the planet ! Can all the data be sound, 
rightly understood, and properly interpreted, that lead 
to such conclusions ? The epic* of this lengthened se- 
ries of events is yet, it may be said, without a hero. 
The tragedy of wild revolution and carnage lacks 



306 APPENDIX. 

romance in the monotony of its devastation ; and des- 
titute alike of a moral, and of a fitting audience, the 
brilliancy of the representation loses half its attrac- 
tions in losing all its humanity. 

" One established principle of the Science, connected 
with this point, is, that there are certain groups of an- 
imal species found fossil in the different sets of strata 
which compose the earth's crust, and that these de- 
monstrate something like a series of distinct faunas, 
corresponding to the number of formations. Seven or 
eight sets of rocks, at least, are as distinctly character- 
ized by particular sets of fossils. But the exceptions 
to the law are likewise very numerous, inasmuch as 
both species and genera have been carried forward, and 
are identically the same, from one formation and 
epoch into another. Hence, points, neither of differ- 
ence nor of resemblance, from age to age, are absolute, 
and cannot very minutely be applied as regards the 
several formations and their organic contents. The 
types of one formation are repeatedly mingled with 
those of another ; and the value of all the evidence 
collected from fossil remains, while it establishes un- 
deniably a succession in the mineral deposits, leaves 
the question as to the limits of the epochs, and their 
relation to Time, still partially undetermined. The 
theory of progressive development, or that of inde- 
pendent acts of creation — the causes of the extinction 
of old and the introduction of new races — the extent 
of time implied or indicated in the whole series of 



APPENDIX. 307 

events — and the all-important point involved in this 
chronology — whether all or any of the geological se- 
ries are alluded to in the Mosaic account of creation, — 
are questions that necessarily press upon the atten- 
tion, as we would solve or not the inquiries suggested. 
The sounding line of geology is not to be despised or 
cast at once aside, should it fail in furnishing a just 
estimate and measure of such profound investigations. 
Every failure will only prove a stimulus to renewed 
exertion, as every discovered path of error leads one step 
in advance towards the path of truth, and that in 
turn to harmony with the Book of all Truth." — Ibid. 

[Poor consolation to a world which groaneth and 
travaileth in pain together until now ! Poor consola- 
tion, if the truth at last to be fished up by the 
sounding line of geology, is of any real importance !] 

" Since accurate observations are more and more 
multiplied, and the principles of paleontology are bet- 
ter understood, the doctrine of a gradual advance of 
animal organization toward higher and more perfect 
forms, as we ascend through successive deposits of the 
earth's crust, is daily losing ground among the culti- 
vators of the Science." 
"We quote the following cautionary remark of Pro- 
fessor Pielet : — " We ought not to be too hasty in 
assuming the absence of certain more perfect types in 
the older faunas, merely because we have not yet dis- 
covered any remains of them. We hardly know any- 
thing of these faunas, except with regard to some of 



308 AITENDIX. 

the inhabitants of the sea: and it is well known that 
in the present condition of the globe, those animals 
living on land exhibit the higher forms of structure. 
Is it not possible that, in these first ages of the world, 
terrestrial animals also existed, more highly organized 
than their marine cotemporaries, although their re- 
mains cither have not been preserved, or are still to 
be, discovered?" — Ibid., Part 4, Chap. 2. 

"In the very earliest specimens of Nature's work- 
manship, we find the mechanism of the parts as mi- 
nute, varied, and multiplied, as in those of her most 
recent productions. Examine the eye of the Trilobite, 
the oldest of the crustaceous, and the distinguishing 
type of the lowest of the fossiliferous rocks. These 
creatures swarmed in the Silurian seas. Their desti- 
ny was not fulfilled by the close of the Tertiary pe- 
riods, for they still exist. But in none of her subse- 
quent creations has nature displayed greater elabora- 
tion in the parts, or more skilful adaptive contrivance 
in their arrangements, than in the visual organ of this 
pakrozoie family. The eye of the trilobite is formed 
of four hundred spherical lenses, arranged in distinct 
compartments on the surface of the cornea, which 
again projects conically upward, so as to enable the 
animal, while resting or seeking its food at the bot- 
tom of the waters, to take in the largest possible field 
of view. Fishes, birds, and mammals have all. it is 
well known, an optical apparatus precisely adjusted 
to their respective habits and the element in which 



Ai^PKNinx. 309 

they live. Pishes and fowls have their eyes different- 
ly constructed. The bat, which preys in the dark — 
the eagle, which soars in the blaze of the sun — and 
the mole, which burrows in the earth, have each pe- 
culiar and appropriate organisms. But in none is 
there greater complication or perfection than what 
is manifested in the eye of those earliest and still 
living tribes of the waters." — Ibid. 

" Geology carries us back to the beginnings of or- 
ganic life, when animals, each after their kind, were 
already perfected and endowed with a ready made ap- 
paratus for the particular sphere of existence assigned 
them. Every great type or class of being, whose re- 
mains are detected in the most ancient rocks of the 
earth, has still its representatives in living nature. 
The two ends of the chain, the infusorial and mam- 
malian families, are still produced distinct, and each 
perfect after its kind. — "Ibid., Part 4, Chap. 2. 



310 APPENDIX. 



c. 



" It does not follow, because a man is eminent in 
geology, that his opinion is of any real value upon 
the religion of geology ; — for the two subjects are quite 
distinct, and a man may be a Corypheus in the prin- 
ciples of geology, who is an ignoramus in its religious 
applications. Indeed, many of the ablest ivriters 
upon geology, take the ground that its religious bear- 
ings do not belong to the Science. 

" The Theological Seminaries of our country do 
need, it seems to me, professorships of Natural Theo- 
logy, to be filled by men who are practically familiar 
with the Natural Sciences. They are amply provided 
with instruction in the metaphysics of theology, her- 
meneutics, and ecclesiastical history ; and 1 should be 
sorry to see these departments less amply provided 
for. But here is the wide field of natural theology, 
large enough for several professorships, which finds no 
place, save a nook in the chair of dogmatics. This 
might have answered well enough when the battle- 
field with scepticism lay in the region of metaphysics, 
or history, or biblical interpretation. But the enemy 
have, within a few years past, intrenched themselves 
within the dominions of natural science ; and there, 
for a long time to come, must be the tug of war. 
And since they have substituted skeletons, and trees, 



APPENDIX. 311 

and stones, as weapons, in the place of abstractions, 
so must Christians do if they would not be defeated. 
Although I fear that theologians are not aware of the 
fact, yet probably the doctrines of materialism are 
more widely embraced at this day than almost any 
other religious error. I might refer, in this connec- 
tion, to the whole subject of Pantheism ; it is from 
biology that the pantheist derives his choicest 
weapons. He appeals also to Astronomy, Zoology, 
and Geology." — Preface to Doct. Hitchcock' } s Reli- 
gion of Geology. 



FINE FOR OVER-DETENTION TWO CENTS A DAY. 
ALTERATIONS OF THE RECORDS BELOW ARE STRICTLY PROHIBITED. 


TAKEN 


TAKEN 


TAKEN 


TAKEN 


TAKEN 


& -*** 9.VI 














jijg 






















, 















































































i 1 





Public Library 

Washington, D. C. 




All losses or injuries be- 
yond reasonable wear, 
however caused, must 
be promptly adjust- 
ed by the person to 
whom the book is 



charged. 



Fine for over de- 
tention two cents a 
day. 
Books will be issued 
and received from ioa. m. 
to 9 P. M. 



Acme Library Card Pocket 

Maje by LIBRARY BUREAU, Boston, 



Keep your card in this pocket, 



